Effective Environmental Governance Research Articles

Exploring Collaborative Environmental Governance: Perspectives on Bridging and Actor Agency

AbstractThis article explores the prospect and practice of alternative and more collaborative approaches to environmental governance, focusing on recent North American experience and with particular attention to: (i) characteristic barriers to effective and collaborative environmental governance; (ii) approaches to collaboration and bridging between actors and sectors; and (iii) the potential role of actor agency. The focus of inquiry is primarily on recent North American experience. The key literature on environmental governance is discussed, and interviews conducted with environmental practitioners, academics, government officials and community leaders to explore and analyse their experiences with environmental governance are analysed. Collectively, these experiences suggest that there is a need for more skilful bridging of actors and initiatives, and a greater role for governments in facilitating collaborative approaches. The interviews also point to a number of challenges that must be overcome before the full potential of collaborative environmental governance can be realized. Although some researchers advocate the need for unified and overarching approaches to environmental governance, there is considerable evidence indicating that efforts are better directed towards building networks and collaboration among a wide diversity of actors, philosophies and approaches.

Rethinking Global Environmental Governance to Deal with Climate Change: The Multiple Logics of Global Collective Action

From the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere threatening climate change to depleted fisheries in the world’s oceans and the spread of persistent organic pesticides bioaccumulating across the food chain, a particularly challenging set of transboundary global environmental problems has emerged—defined by the need for a worldwide policy response. While the logic of collective action at a scope that corresponds to the scale of the public good to be provided is well understood in theory (Mancur Olson 1965; Henry N. Butler and Jonathan R. Macey 1996), the practice of good environmental governance at the supranational scale lags behind. The need to manage interdependence, and thus the economic logic for policy coordination in the context of problems such as climate change, is clear. Where natural resource consumption or pollution harms spill across national boundaries and affect neighboring countries or the shared resources of the global commons, the “super-externalities” that emerge present a special policy challenge (Andre Dua and Esty 1997). Absent a collaborative response that draws all harm-causers and harm-bearers into a regime that internalizes these externalities and provides an appropriate degree of global-scale environmental protection, a tragedy of the commons will likely unfold (Garrett Hardin 1968; E. Donald Elliott, Bruce A. Ackerman, and John C. Millian 1985). Pollution-causing activities will be conducted at an inefficiently large scale and open-access resources, such as the atmosphere, will be overexploited. But a successful response to climate change and other international environmental problems requires more than good economic theory. Legal, policy, ethical, and institutional underpinnings must also be established for effective global environmental governance. In this paper, Rethinking Global Environmental Governance to Deal with Climate Change: The Multiple Logics of Global Collective Action

The Architecture of Global Environmental Governance: Bringing Science to Bear on Policy

This article draws on the findings of the international research project on the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change to evaluate current proposals for reforming organizational arrangements that address environmental protection and especially calls for strengthening the UN Environment Programme or creating a UN Environment Organization. The first section explores pitfalls arising when policy-makers focus on form before sorting out functional matters. The next section examines institutional challenges confronting efforts to create effective environmental governance systems. The final section broadens the scope to address issues extending beyond environmental protection in a world of nation states. The goal is not to throw cold water on specific proposals of those who advocate organizational reform. Rather, the article argues that form should follow function in this realm as in others. By itself, organizational reform cannot achieve environmental protection, much less the broader goal of sustainable development.

Making democracy matter: Responsibility and effective environmental governance in regional Australia

This paper will critically examine the changing social relations of responsibility associated with Australia's current regional ‘experiment’ in environmental governance. This experiment centrally involves the transfer of responsibility for natural resource management (NRM) from Federal and State governments to community-based regional bodies. Although governments are promoting democratic NRM planning at the regional level as a more effective means of addressing Australia's environmental problems, we argue that a tension is emerging in association with the simultaneous pursuit of these goals: ‘effectiveness’ has been defined in terms of the accountability of regional communities to central governments for the achievement of short-term results, an approach which is undermining the democratic promise that regional bodies would be responsive to wider community concerns. The notion of ‘responsibility’ provides a means of investigating this tension, as accountability and responsiveness are both elements of the overarching concept of responsibility. The examination of NRM institutions through this theoretical lens indicates that the shared substantive interests required to motivate a sense of shared responsibility amongst regional actors have been sidelined by the procedural demands of accountability. We argue that, if NRM planning is to be genuinely accountable and responsive to substantive public ends, the properly social and dialogical nature of responsibility relationships must be recovered. The paper concludes with a discussion of the social and political relations of responsibility that appear to provide the best opportunities for effective environmental governance, and thus for the achievement of more sustainable NRM outcomes, at the regional level.

The Republican State and 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.

Frank Biermann and Steffen Bauer (eds): A world environmental organization: solutions or threat for effective international environmental governance?

Frank Biermann and Steffen Bauer (eds): A world environmental organization: solutions or threat for effective international environmental governance?

Minamata Disease and Environmental Governance

Abstract: This article aims to clarify the conditions necessary for environmental governance through a case study of one of the most tragic examples of environmental destruction, the Minamata disease. The Minamata disease is methyl‐mercury poisoning resulting from the ingestion of contaminated fish and shellfish. The first incident of the Minamata disease occurred in the mid‐1950s, in Kumamoto Prefecture. In spite of the grave lesson that the pollution in Kumamoto provided, Japanese society went on to experience a second occurrence of Minamata disease in the mid‐1960s, in Niigata Prefecture. Conflicts between victims, the companies responsible for contamination, and the central and prefectural governments have continued for the past 50 years. As a whole, the history of the two incidences of Minamata disease shows a lack of environmental governance in Japanese society. Effective environmental governance is the ability to produce adequate solutions to a variety of environmental problems. In order to resolve an environmental problem such as Minamata disease adequately, four tasks must be achieved. These are the discovery of the cause, the prevention of suffering, recovery from suffering and the learning of a lesson. What factors are crucial to the achievement of these tasks? Through an analysis of the history of Minamata disease, I would like to point out three fundamental factors that have a decisive influence on the solution of an environmental problem. They are the existence of an effective and just juridical system, a mature public sphere, and the quality of individual actors who are concerned with an environmental problem. The following conditions are important to the fostering of environmental governance on a more concrete level: sensitivity of the society and the ability to set an agenda, autonomy of the research process and of any research groups, organization of the antipollution movement, an adequately designed system for compensation, and various measures which help to counter socially amplified suffering.

Planning to Learn: Blue Crab Policymaking in the Chesapeake Bay

With harvest values in excess of $50 million, the blue crab (Callinectus sapidus) is the most important commercial fishery in the Chesapeake Bay. Since the late 1980s, Bay-wide policymaking for the blue crab has developed through two distinct processes—the Fishery Management Plan Workgroup and Bi-State Blue Crab Advisory Committee. This research examines these institutions and asks why the latter mechanism was more successful in answering key questions critical to managing blue crabs that remained unresolved under the traditional planning process. Using the rubric of policy learning and employing qualitative research methods, the research finds that keys to explaining variation in policy learning are: (1) the relative importance actors ascribe the process, (2) how the actors are engaged, and (3) how scientific conflict and uncertainty are managed. Understanding the processes by which policy relevant information is developed and incorporated into decision making is critical to effective environmental governance.

Institutions for Scientific Advice: Global Environmental Assessments and Their Influence in Developing Countries

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. …

Environment and Development: Dissecting the Connections

The article investigates ways of understanding the relationship between the environment and development, and their implications for public policy. It argues that, in the absence of effective domestic environmental policies, participation in international trade may have adverse welfare consequences in exporting developing countries. Through a critique of environmental Kuznets curves, it is shown that environmental quality may be a precondition for and contributor to desirable developmental outcomes, strengthening the case for effective environmental governance in developing countries. Developing countries may need to adopt a different strategy than the developed countries in their environmental policy, placing more emphasis on solutions that will work in a difficult implementation context and on reforms that can transform that context.

Environmental governance for biodiversity

Effective environmental governance is hampered by the continuing presumption of the state as central actor in the domestic and international political contexts. Over the last 20 years, the traditional ‘Westphalian’ conception of the sovereign state has come under increasing pressure not only in theory, but also in practice, as evidenced by the increasing importance attributed to the participation of quasi-government and non-government actors in decision-making in domestic and international political issues. This paper is a contribution to the on-going debate about the meaning of effective environmental governance by mapping out a post-Westphalian conception of governance. In particular, it defines governance in relation to the protection of biodiversity; highlights obstacles to effective governance in this area, and discusses forming environmental management plans and environmental governance regimes to implement them. The final section of the paper suggests seven directions for ensuring the realisation of effective environmental governance.

Prospects for effective marine governance in the NW Pacific region

What are the prospects for effective regional action to protect the NW Pacific from environmental harm? The article reviews governance lessons from existing regional marine protection regimes, in order to derive lessons for effective regional environmental protection. Prominent factors influencing effective regional environmental protection include the influence of public concern, NGOs, national leadership, international institutions and transnational scientific networks in establishing regional environmental governance. Yet, prospects are not promising for effective regional environmental governance in the NW Pacific. International institutions are weak; knowledge is only weakly organized, and appears difficult to mobilize, and no country appears willing to commit economic or diplomatic resources towards regional environmental leadership. The absence of transnational channels and institutional functions is a consequence of deeper regional realities. Few governments are interested in establishing strong regional institutions. Moreover, domestic circumstances that were necessary for effective institutional influence elsewhere in the world are absent the region. The most effective international institutions worked with civil society by amplifying pressures on governments, and by creating and reinforcing public concern. In this region these conditions are generally absent, calling for a deeper long-run strategy for effective governance.

Environmental regulation and economic integration

This article explores the relationship between economic integration and environmental regulation. It begins by observing that fears that economic competition would lead to a regulatory 'race toward the bottom' appear to have proven unwarranted: increased economic integration has proven compatible with the general strengthening of environmental standards. It then explains why economic interdependence has not led sub-national, national, and regional governments to compete by lowering their environmental standards. The article then explores various mechanisms by which economic integration has contributed to the strengthening of regulatory standards. It concludes by discussing the shortcomings of existing mechanisms of global environmental governance and specifying the circumstances under which regulatory coordination can promote more effective environmental governance.

Assessing the effectiveness of international environmental institutions

In the pages of this column we have tried to explore the various ways in which the term institution can be defined and interpreted in light of the contemporary social challenge of global environmental change. International regimes are one important type of international institution whose purpose is to coordinate the activities of states and other actors. Scholars of international relations regard regimes as sets of rules, norms, procedures and programmes which prescribe appropriate forms of behaviour and promote the achievement of collective goals. As Marc Levy demonstrates in the analysis which follows, regimes are now sufficiently varied in topic and practice that good comparative studies can be undertaken to assess just what type and format are likely to be best for a fairer and more efficacious international environmental agreement. Given the relative recency of major regimes and the huge variety of circumstances in which they are expected to work, this research effort has been impressive and timely. But an effective regime is only as good as the willingness of the parties to make it so. Up to a point, that willingness can be engendered by the regime creation process itself. But only up to a point. Effective international environmental governance still relies on compliant states and far-seeking stakeholders who hold the trump cards.