Global Environmental Regimes Research Articles

Introduction: What Scholars Know (and Need to Know) about the Politics of Climate Change

Climate change is fundamentally a political problem; it is not merely a technical or economic challenge but rather an arena for sharp conflicts over the distribution of gains and losses and the associated ethical challenges. However, as Keohane (2015), Javeline (2014), and Green and Hale (2017) noted in PS: Political Science & Politics and Perspectives on Politics, research on climate change has not been traditionally central to mainstream political science. Field journals including Global Environmental Politics and Environmental Politics have made important contributions in this regard, and leading university presses have published important books on climate issues. However, the neglect of climate politics by mainstream journals is surprising—although we note the recent Perspective on Politics symposium on Green Political Science—because political scientists have devoted considerable attention to studying environmental politics at the community (Ostrom 1990), national (Kelemen and Vogel 2010), and international (Young 1994) levels. Indeed, there is robust literature on the management of common pool resources, national styles of environmental regulation, and environmental social movements, as well as global environmental regimes. Yet, the topic of climate change—an important subject in the study of environmental politics—too often has been neglected by mainstream political science.

Long-Term Sustainability of Outer Space: Role of Sustainable Development Goals and Its Legal Consequences

Celestial bodies had always been part of the process of volatile natural phenomena. The problem of collusion and encroaching path of each other, and interference of comets and dust has been as a forming part of space debris. Things have become riskier with the humans’ entry. This has generated a genuine apprehension of damage to the adverse environment of outer space. In this connection, the UNCOPUOS has been working on the agenda of sustainable space. In 2010, the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the UNCOPUOS created a Working Group on the Long-Term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities to develop a consolidated set of voluntary, non-binding guidelines for the States, international organisations, and private entities to ensure sustainable space. 
 In this connection, the present paper discusses various aspects of sustainable space including possible applicability of SDGs to outer space. The part one of the paper introduces the concept of sustainable development. It also highlights the global environmental protection regime and underneath politics. Part two of the paper canvases the role of space (technologies) in achieving the SDGs. Part three of the paper explores to answer the question “whether SDGs includes Space in it or not?” If not, how the idea of “sustainable space” can be achieved? There, the authors explain the need for sustainable space and discussion happening around. In part four, authors conclude by arguing for evolving regime for sustainable space and resist from committing the same mistake that we did to the earth environment.

Environmental Security Policies of the Russian Federation

Since the earliest times of history, humanity has been known to be fighting an existential war against nature. Although man’s struggle against his natural environment has not caused severe damage to nature for centuries, human-induced natural environmental degradation has begun to be seen with modernization, the effect of which was experienced to a great extent in the 20th century. With both population growth and technological developments, humanity has achieved significant gains in its struggle for survival against nature, but these gains have turned against humanity itself with the irreversible deterioration of nature. This degradation, which started with environmental pollution in the past and resulted in climate changes today, has been taken care of by modern states, which have significant power in the governance of people. These modern states, which previously had a security perspective through their relations, have started to take steps as environmental problems harm their legitimacy and citizens. States had to come together to solve this common problem no matter how different they were in government type and ideology. Since the day it left the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation has not refrained from taking national steps toward the global environmental security regime. Although like many states, the fight against environmental problems has made mistakes and shortcomings, it has cooperated internationally for various reasons. The most important reason is that the Russian Federation is at the top of the list of states polluting nature. But apart from this, environmental security has been the area of interest of the Kremlin administration due to its geopolitical and geostrategic interests in the international system. Therefore, it has set targets on environmental security in documents such as foreign policy and security concepts adopted since the early 1990s. This study aims to examine the national and international environmental policies of the Russian Federation on global climate change. For this reason, firstly, a brief introduction to the subject of environmental security will be made, and the documents containing the political and security perspective of the Russian Federation will be discussed in the next section. In the last part, it will try to summarize what kind of international contribution and cooperation the Russian Federation has made in solving environmental problems.

Flow variation at multiple scales filters fish life histories and constrains community diversity in desert streams

AbstractEnvironmental regimes, which encompass decadal‐scale or longer variation in climate and disturbance, shape communities by selecting for adaptive life histories, behaviors, and morphologies. In turn, at ecological timescales, extreme events may cause short‐term changes in composition and structure via mortality and recolonization of the species pool. Here, we illustrate how short‐term variation in desert stream fish communities following floods and droughts depends on the context of the long‐term flow regime through ecological filtering of life history strategies. Using quarterly measures of fish populations in streams spanning a 10‐fold gradient in flow variation in Arizona, USA, we quantified temporal change in community composition and life history strategies. In streams with highly variable flow regimes, fish communities were less diverse, fluctuation in species richness was the principle mechanism of temporal change in diversity, and communities were dominated by opportunistic life history strategies. Conversely, relatively stable flow regimes resulted in more diverse communities with greater species replacement and dominance of periodic and equilibrium strategies. Importantly, the effects of anomalous high‐ and low‐flow events depended on flow regime. Under more stable flow regimes, fish diversity was lower following large floods than after seasons without floods, whereas diversity was independent of high‐flow events in streams with flashier flow regimes. Likewise, community life history composition was more dependent on antecedent anomalous events in stable compared to more temporally variable regimes. These findings indicate that extreme events may be a second‐level filter on community composition, with effects contingent on the long‐term properties of the disturbance regime (e.g., overall degree of variation) in which extremes take place. Ongoing changes to global environmental regimes will likely drive new patterns of community response to extreme events.

Nationalist Backlash Against Foreign Climate Shaming

Abstract Should international pro-climate actors speak up against climate rogues, or do foreign critics risk igniting nationalist backlash against global environmental norms and institutions? We explore naming and shaming dynamics in global climate politics by fielding survey experiments to nationally representative samples in Brazil. Our results show that nationalism moderates public reactions to foreign climate shaming: individuals who are highly attached to their nation are more likely to reject international criticism than their lowly attached peers. Contrary to existing expectations, however, we find that nationalist publics express little support for virulent defiance against foreign critics. Our findings hold irrespective of the source of criticism and the nature of the critical message. These results sound a cautionary note on the belief that liberal internationalists should tread carefully so as not to unadvisedly unleash nationalist pushback. Although foreign climate criticism may bump up against nationalist sentiment in climate rogues, it will not necessarily fuel an all-out backlash against the global environmental regime.

Turning Toward the Sun: A Cross-National Analysis of Solar Energy Generation

Anthropogenic climate change has provoked worldwide responses to address existing and impending dangers to the natural world and society. The rapid expansion of solar energy in recent decades has emerged as a viable alternative for generating electricity and is largely responsible for the steady growth in overall renewable energy expansion worldwide. In this paper, I examine factors influencing the rise in solar energy generation, cross-nationally from 2000 through 2016. Using Fixed Effects (FE) panel regression analysis with a lagged dependent variable, I test variables associated with ecological modernization theory, aspects of the world economy and foreign direct investment dependence, and assertions of world society theory and the role of international nongovernmental organizations in spreading global environmentalism. Findings for the analysis are consistent with previous studies focusing on the global environmental regime and the spread of environmentalism worldwide in influencing country-level behavior in relation to the environment. As energy demands worldwide soar, the implications of these findings point to how integration within the global civil society has the potential to influence remediation of environmental issues due to climate change.

How environmental treaties contribute to global health governance

BackgroundRecent work in international relations theory argues that international regimes do not develop in isolation, as previously assumed, but evolve as open systems that interact with other regimes. The implications of this insight’s for sustainable development remains underexplored. Even thought environmental protection and health promotion are clearly interconnected at the impact level, it remains unclear how global environmental governance interacts with global health governance at the institutional level. In order to fill this gap, this article aims to assess how environmental treaties contribute to global health governance.Methods and resultsTo assess how environmental treaties contribute to global health governance, we conducted a content analysis of 2280 international environmental treaties. For each of these treaties, we measure the type and number of health-related provisions in these treaties. The result is the Health and Environment Interplay Database (HEIDI), which we make public with the publication of this article. This new database reveals that more than 300 environmental treaties have health-related provisions.ConclusionsWe conclude that the global environmental regime contributes significantly to the institutionalization of the global health regime, considering that the health regime includes itself very few treaties focusing primarily on health. When reflecting on how global governance can improve population health, decision makers should not only consider the instruments available to them within the realm of global health institutions. They should broaden their perspectives to integrate the contribution of other global regimes, such as the global environmental regime.

Global Environmentalism and the World-System: A Cross-National Analysis of Air Pollution

Ambient air pollution represents a global health crisis, leading to 7 million annual deaths worldwide. The rise of a “global environmental regime” manifests in the widespread adoption of environmental policies and laws to reduce ambient air pollution, but debate remains whether they have any effect. Scholars argue that the relationship between the global environmental regime and air pollution depends on the penetration of the global environmental regime. In this analysis, I argue that the relationship between the global environmental regime and air pollution levels is contingent on a country’s position in the world-system. Using fixed effects panel analyses of 144 countries from 1990 to 2010, I find embeddedness in the global environmental regime does predict lower national air pollution levels. This effect, however, is smaller in semi-peripheral and peripheral countries. These findings contribute to an emerging body of scholarship integrating world society and world systems approaches in the study of the environment.

Moving towards a twin-agenda: Gender equality and land degradation neutrality

The conceptual framework for Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) highlights that land degradation in developing countries impacts men and women differently, mainly due to unequal access to land, water, credit, extension services and technology. It further asserts that gender inequality plays a significant role in land-degradation-related poverty hence the need to address persistent gender inequalities that fuel women’s poverty in LDN interventions. This paper presents recommendations for moving towards a twin-agenda: gender equality and land degradation neutrality. It first introduces gender dimensions of current global environmental regimes, identifying critical interlinkages between gender equality and women’s human rights and land rights with a focus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Next, it analyses gender entry points in the LDN conceptual framework, presenting promising gender mainstreaming practices in local efforts to address land degradation. The research methods of content analysis of relevant literature, including official documents of the UNCCD Conference of the Parties (COP); collection and analysis of case studies from different geographies to identify promising gender-responsive practices at country and local levels; and the analysis of the outcomes from a capacity building workshop on gender mainstreaming held during the COP13 in Ordos, China, in September 2017 are used to recommend how gender perspectives can be incorporated into policies, programs and interventions aimed to avoid, reduce or reverse land degradation at local and national levels.

What Can Be Learned from Experience with Scientific Advisory Committees in the Field of International Environmental Politics?

Scientific advisory committees (SACs) are a critically important part of global environmental policy. This commentary reviews the role of SACs in six global and regional environmental regimes, defined here as the set of rules, norms, and procedures that are developed by states and international organizations out of their common concerns and used to organize common activities. First, SACs play a critical role in putting issues on the political agenda and the creation of an overarching regime. Second, the effectiveness of a given SAC and the associated regime is highly variable. Third, there is also considerable variation in the extent to which the regime is driven by an overarching scientific consensus, for example, high in the case of climate change, lower in the case of whaling. Fourth, the role of science in a given regime is also a function of whether the problem being addressed is relatively benign or more malign, that is to say, marked by deep political disagreements (i.e., climate change). Finally, the cases examined here suggest that the institutional design of the SAC matters and can influence the overall effectiveness of the SAC and by extension, the regime, but it is seldom decisive.

KONSTRUKSI GERAKAN SOSIAL : EFEKTIVITAS GERAKAN LINGKUNGAN HIDUP GLOBAL

The Global environmental movement is getting stronger. The models and patterns of movement have constructed new global environmental norm and values. Main agenda of this movement is resistance to global environmental regime which has not been able to solve environmental problems. This paper found that the environmental movement is successful on conducting environmentalist community and constructing “Go green” such as green discourse in global production and consumption.

Environmentalism in the Periphery: Institutional Embeddedness and Deforestation among Fifteen Palm Oil Producers, 1990 – 2012

Environmental sociologists highlight the exploitative nature of the global capitalist economy where resource extraction from nations in the periphery tends to disproportionately benefit those of the core. From the Brazilian Amazon to mineral-rich Sub-Saharan Africa, the practice of “unequal ecological exchange” persists. Simultaneously, a “global environmental regime” has coalesced as a prominent feature of the contemporary world system. In the post-World War II era, legitimate nation-states must take steps to protect the natural environment and prevent its degradation even at their own economic expense. Stronger national ties to global institutions, particularly international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) consistently yield more positive environmental outcomes. However, previous work suggests that normative expectations for improved environmental practice will be weak or nonexistent in the periphery. We use the case of palm oil production and its relationship to deforestation to provide a more nuanced analysis of the relationship between material and institutional forces in the periphery. Using unbalanced panels of fifteen palm oil producing countries from 1990 to 2012, we find that stronger national ties to world society via citizen memberships in INGOs result in greater primary forest area among palm oil producers. However, this effect is strongest where production is lowest and weakens as production increases. Even in the cases of Indonesia and Malaysia, where palm oil production is substantially higher than any other producer, ties to global institutions are significantly related to reduced forest loss. These results indicate the variable importance of national embeddedness into global institutions within the periphery of the world system.

Regime Learning in Global Environmental Governance

An increasingly complex governance architecture has become a major characteristic of current global environmental governance, often resulting in different degrees of complexity and fragmentation within global environmental regimes. Social learning processes are introduced by scholars and policy makers alike as management approaches for governing complex dynamic systems in situations that feature a high degree of complexity and uncertainty. Scholars argue that actors in complex environmental issue areas can learn in their social context and could develop the necessary knowledge, attitudes and behaviour to enhance their capacity to effectively address the environmental problem. This is where this article picks up the discussion and assesses the impact of a regime's complexity on its learning capabilities. It further identifies major drivers and barriers of regime learning processes in international environmental regimes.

Governing Oligopolies: Global Regimes and Market Structure

Historically, governments have adopted legalized, integrated, and global rules to govern oligopolistic industries, such as shipping, chemicals, and industrial production. By contrast, they have adopted nonbinding and unintegrated rules and institutions to govern competitive industries, such as energy, agriculture, and mining, at the national or subnational scale. Considering that competitive producers face greater barriers to political collective action, what explains the form of global governance across these sectors? This article demonstrates that oligopolistic producers are more intensively and extensively regulated than competitive markets because producers in oligopolistic industries can more cost-effectively alter markets to meet environmental goals. Therefore, despite their political influence, oligopolies are regularly called upon to initiate and sustain market transformation on a global scale. New qualitative evidence from two treaty regimes governing different types of markets supports this theory, as well as new quantitative data on the full range of global environmental treaty regimes since World War II.

Arguing Global Environmental Constitutionalism

The current global environmental law and governance regime has been designed primarily to attend to the worsening ecological crisis. Evidence, however, suggests that the regime is far from achieving its goal and it is failing in its efforts to solve what people perceive to be pervasive global environmental problems. There is little doubt that this regime is in need of urgent reforms and/or re-situation in a decidedly different paradigm. This article proposes that global constitutionalism, while no panacea, could contribute to these paradigm-shifting reforms by providing a new perspective through which to view the current deficient global environmental law and governance regime and, in real terms, ameliorating some of the deficiencies of the regime through a normative process of constitutionalization.

Catch 22: wetlands protection and fishing for survival

AbstractEnvironmental regulation of biodiversity hotspots, including wetlands, is of increasing importance in an era when species and habitat loss is common. A number of global environmental protection regimes attempt to set up processes that protect vulnerable species and their habitats. One such regulatory regime, the Ramsar Convention (Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, especially as Waterfowl Habitat), provides overarching protection for hundreds of wetlands around the world. In this paper, one Ramsar listed wetland, Southeast Asia's and Cambodia's largest freshwater lake, the Tonle Sap, is subject to a legal geographical analysis. A legal geography approach – one that puts front and centre an examination of both the environmental protection regulations for the wetlands and the people subject to them – enables the complexity of the legal‐human–environment dynamic in this unique wetlands to be revealed. Measuring the success, or otherwise, of environmental protection regulations requires an understanding of both the biophysical and social dynamics of the place subject to that protection. Geographers, particularly legal geographers, are well placed to document the human–environment dimensions of place and to expose fragilities or disconnections between regulations and place. Regulations that do not take adequate account of complex people–place dynamics are likely to fall short of expectations and run the risk of becoming self‐defeating, giving rise to a potential catch‐22 scenario.

From Waste to Resources? Interrogating ‘Race to the Bottom’ in the Global Environmental Governance of the Hazardous Waste Trade

The rise of global environmental governance regimes allegedly contradicts the process of an environmental “race to the bottom” (RTB) that results from capitalist globalization. We examine new developments in this area through a qualitative case study of the Basel Convention. Here, we find that new regulations in toxic wastes governance are in fact being co-created with industry actors and aim to accelerate the flow of toxic “resources” to less-developed countries. Further, these shifts are legitimized by a shift in discourse— from thinking of toxics materials as “wastes” to thinking of them as “resources”— that re-frames the toxic wastes trade as essential for sustainable economic development rather than as a manifestation of global environmental injustice, thereby undermining environmentalist claims. Our findings suggest that, despite an expansion of hazardous waste regulations, the RTB concept is still relevant in the context of global environmental governance. We conclude that a fruitful avenue for applying the RTB concept in this context is to go beyond a strict materialist interpretation of global politics to also consider the role of discourses and contesting ideologies in shaping global environmental policy debates.

Interpretation of the source-specific substantive control measures of the Minamata Convention on Mercury

Being persistent, toxic, and bio-accumulative, Mercury (Hg) seriously affects the environment and human health. Due to Hg's attribute of long-range environmental transport across national borders, especially through atmospheric transport, no country can fully protect its environment and human health with its own efforts, without global cooperation. The Minamata Convention on Mercury, which was formally adopted and opened for signature in October 2013, is the only global environmental regime on the control of Hg pollution. Its main substantive control measures are source-specific: its phasing-out, phasing-down, and other main substantive requirements all direct to specific categories of pollution sources through the regulation of specific sectors of the economy and social life. This Convention does not take a national quota approach to quantify the Parties' nationwide total allowable consumption or discharge of Hg or Hg compounds, nor does it quantify their nationwide total reduction requirements. This paper attempts to find the underlying reasons for this source-specific approach and offers two interpretations. One possible interpretation is that Hg might be a non-threshold pollutant, i.e., a pollutant without a risk-free value of concentration. The existence of a reference dose (RfD), reference concentration (RfC), provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI), minimal risk level (MRL) or other similar reference values of Hg does not necessarily mean that Hg cannot be regarded as non-threshold because such reference values have scientific uncertainties and may also involve policy considerations. Another interpretation is that Hg lacks a feasibly determinable total allowable quantity. There is evidence that negotiators might have treated Hg as non-threshold, or at least accepted that Hg lacks a feasibly determinable total allowable quantity: (1) The negotiators were informed about the serious situations of the current emissions, releases, and legacy deposition; (2) the UNEP Secretariat took the position that Hg is non-threshold and should be eliminated to the maximum; (3) European countries, the USA and other western countries were in a better position to regard Hg as non-threshold and push forward a global reduction of Hg emissions and releases to the minimum; (4) the negotiators took the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) as a model; and (5) a fairly large number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were organized under umbrella NGO networks such as the Zero Mercury Working Group (ZMWG) and the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN) and made a significant contribution to the negotiation process. The interpretations for the Minamata Convention might similarly be used to interpret the source-specific approach of the Stockholm Convention on POPs and the national quota approach of global environmental regimes on stratospheric ozone and climate mitigation. These two interpretations focus on the features of the pollutants and for this reason may be useful for future negotiators of other international environmental treaties to select appropriate models. They also suggest that the source-specific approach may be adopted in the future for pollutants with similar features of being possibly non-threshold and without a feasibly determinable total allowable quantity.

Global Private Regimes, Domestic Public Law

Debates about the efficacy of private environmental regimes have been fueled by disparate research findings, such as when the same regime that has been effective in one setting is found to be ineffective in another. In this article, we show that the efficacy of ISO 14001, the most widely adopted voluntary environmental regime in the world, is conditioned by the stringency of countries’ domestic regulations. In doing so, we outline a model of strategic corporate environmentalism wherein firms strategically focus their International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification to reduce emissions of visible air pollutants as opposed to less visible water pollutants. Our analyses of pollution levels for a panel of 159 countries (73 for water pollution) from 1991 to 2005 indicate that ISO 14001 certifications reduce air (SO2) emissions in countries with less stringent environmental regulations but have no effect on air emissions in countries with stringent environmental regulations. We also find that ISO membership levels are not associated with reductions in water pollution levels (Biochemical Oxygen Demand BOD), irrespective of stringency of domestic law. Our article suggests that the efficacy of global private environmental regimes is likely to be conditioned by the domestic regulatory context in which firms function, and given firm’s strategic considerations, this efficacy could vary across pollution types.

Comparative typological study of change in global environmental regimes

Many global environmental agreements have shown diverse changes in their long-term implementation. Comparative studies on international regimes are limited, and research on change in such regimes is not well developed. A comparative typological study of change in global environmental regimes is presented in this paper. Ernst B. Haas’s “three models of change” is chosen as a framework to explain change in the regimes. The models are (1) incremental growth, (2) turbulent nongrowth, and (3) managed interdependence. They reflect the shift of power balance among member states and their knowledge of policies. The models are applied to five case studies covering the Ramsar, CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna), Basel, Ozone, and Climate regimes, which have been in effect for over 15 years. The three models help explain diverse changes in those regimes. Five factors, (1) shift of power balance and political leadership, (2) the scope of the regime (narrow or wide), (3) institutional legacy, (4) consensual knowledge and conflict of political value, and (5) learning between rival groups, have made major contribution to the change in those regimes.