Global Civil Society And Global Environmental Governance

What will it take to protect the global environment? In this book, Ronnie D. Lipschutz argues that neither world government nor green economics can do the job. Governmental regulations often are resisted by those whose behavior they are intended to change, and markets—even green ones—look to profits more than to protection. What will be needed, Lipschutz believes, is not global management but political action through community- and place-based organizations and projects. People acting together locally can have a cumulative impact on environmental quality that is significant, long lasting, and widespread. The comparative case studies of environmental activism in Northern California, Hungary, and Indonesia (the latter written by Judith Mayer) illustrate one of the central premises of this book: that local action is linked increasingly to globe-spanning networks of knowledge and practice, in what Lipschutz calls global civil society. The result is a system of governance that is both local and global, to which states and international organizations are turning increasingly for help and advice.

Explores the growing role of global civil society and local environmental activism in the management and protection of the environment worldwide.

How can civil society and global governors come together in new ways to improve links among trade, environmental and social values? In this important and wide-ranging volume, an unparalleled array of contributors examines the many new processes of civil society engagement that have been introduced at the local, regional and global levels. Assessing what more can be done to strengthen the productive partnerships between civil society and global governance, the book draws on the extensive inventory of existing practices and community-based alternatives to demonstrate how particular mechanisms for civil society participation in global governance have enhanced or impeded the specific economic, environmental and political outcomes that many seek to achieve.

This book examines the impact of current and emerging digital technologies on global environmental governance, and in particular on environmental civil society organizations. Technological innovations are constantly emerging: internet and social media platforms, blockchains, big data, and artificial intelligence are some of the most common or promising digital technologies of our times. Through case studies and the analysis of concrete applications of digital technologies, this book shows how these digital technologies can be deployed to support global environmental governance, and in particular a multi-stakeholder approach to the protection of the environment. It provides an overview of the diverse uses of these digital technologies by civil society organizations (CSOs) in global environmental governance. In this fast-changing context, the capacity of environmental CSOs to manage and benefit from digital technologies, and to produce and distribute information, can strengthen their participation in global environmental governance. Their key roles, including advocacy, monitoring, knowledge production, fundraising, nudging individual behaviors, and project implementation, greatly benefit from the use of these technologies. By examining some of the most-utilized current digital technologies and presenting some of the most prominent emerging ones, this book aims to illustrate how active civil society organizations operate, and how ICTs support some of their roles, and therefore their participation in global environmental governance. This book will appeal to scholars and students of environmental studies and politics, global governance, political sociology, geography and communication studies along with policy makers and communication specialists from the environmental community.

The world is entering a period of unprecedented environmental and political change. By mid-century, climate change will cause dramatic ecosystem shifts. Hundreds, if not thousands, of species will disappear from the earth including icons like polar bears, gorillas, Asiatic lions and bluefin tuna. For many cultures ’species’ are ’place’. As our cultivated global community erodes, international triage decisions about species and local ecosystems will commence and if we are not alert, these decisions will be made on our collective behalf, without local perspective or accountability. Global Environmental Governance, Civil Society and Wildlife illuminates a clear pathway for the environmental, non-governmental community to transition into a co-governance role. Many NGO diplomats have deeper experience and more technical knowledge about policy discussions than their government counterparts and are unburdened by sovereign constraints. The book puts forward the perspectives of developing world civil society and the case that it must play a more significant role in future decision making. Civil society from around the world must be welcomed by governments at the global environmental governance table if we are to hear birdsong after the storm.

Civil society participants have voiced concerns that the environmental problems that were the subject of multilateral environmental agreements negotiated during the 1992 Rio processes are not serving to ameliorate global environmental problems. These concerns raise significant questions regarding the utility of negotiating agreements through the UN. This book elucidates the complexity of how participants engage in these negotiations through the various processes that take place under the auspices of the UN—primarily those related to climate and biological diversity. By taking an ethnographic approach and providing concrete examples of how it is that civil society participants engage in making policy, this book develops a robust sense of the implications of the current terrain of policy-making—both for the environment, and for the continued participation of non-state actors in multilateral environmental governance. Using data gathered at actual negotiations, the book develops concepts such as participation and governance beyond theory. The research uses participant observation ethnographic methods to tie the theoretical frameworks to people’s actual activities as policy is generated and contested. Whereas topics associated with global environmental governance are traditionally addressed in fields such as international relations and political science, this book contributes to developing a richer understanding of the theories using a sociological framework, tying individual activities into larger social relations and shedding light on critical questions associated with transnational civil society and global politics.

The contributors to this volume draw upon the experiences of environmental regimes to examine the problems of internationalgovernance in the absence of a world government.

ÔThis book is a novel, sophisticated, broad ranging and insightful study of the idea of global environmental governance but from a legal dimension and perspective. While recognising that concepts and ideas used to describe governance are generally abstract, vague and slippery, this project brings clarity to the field by being theoretically informed, contextually sensitive and pragmatically circumscribed. Its conclusions and arguments open up a field of inquiry that has to be genuinely interdisciplinary and in that sense has great potential to contribute to a better understanding of environmental themes and issues. This book is destined to become a landmark for legal academics who will write about environmental governance in that its concern is with the global governance of nature rather than a text that uses the environment as a pretext for understanding governance. It is well written, easy and enjoyable to read and while it traverses through diverse bodies of literature it manages to effectively communicate with a variety of scholarly communities.Õ Ð Afshin Akhtarkhavari, Griffith Law School, Australia ÔFourth generation global environmental regulation attempts to address the complex realities of an interconnected environment, global environmental problems and collective regulatory responses. It merits conceptual clarity. Louis KotzŽ reveals the legal contours and content of global environmental governance by chipping away such parts of the conceptual marble block as are not needed. For the environmental lawyer, it is a welcome Ð and much needed Ð process of elimination. This book provides a toolkit for lawyers to engage critically with the extra-legal concept of environmental governance. Its scrutiny and careful analysis contribute meaningfully to the environmental discourse.Õ Ð Christine Voigt, University of Oslo, Norway ÔGlobal Environmental Governance is a truly important book. Drawing on a multitude of disciplines, award-winning environmental law Professor Louis KotzŽ masterfully explains the emerging concept of Òglobal environmental governanceÓ and its elements of globalism, environmental law, regulation, and governance theory. He makes a compelling case that the world has outgrown the ÒsustainabilityÓ model and moved toward this more all-encompassing approach to environmental regulation. This admirable book makes global environmental governance theory understandable and pertinent so environmental leaders, lawyers, and regulators can engage comfortably with this new vision for an ecologically and economically healthy world.Õ Ð George (Rock) Pring, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, US ÔThis book, in examining the relationship between global environmental governance and environmental law, provides an important and timely contribution to the quest to fashion a more viable approach to regulating the relationship between humanity and the environment. While the term ÒgovernanceÓ is much employed in international environmental law scholarship, its conceptual underpinnings have not, on the whole, been adequately addressed in the legal sphere and understanding of the symbiotic relationship between the two areas has suffered as a result. This book makes a welcome start to tackling these issues and, it is to be hoped, will trigger renewed vigour in this socially and legally vital area of inquiry.Õ Ð Karen Morrow, University of Swansea, Wales, UK ÔFor years, scholars of international law and international relations have developed parallel literatures. In Global Environmental Governance, Louis KotzŽ offers a common conceptual, theoretical, and normative ground in the global environmental field. As a skillful lawyer, he dissects terminology, explains core assumptions, and constructs causal chains. But he does not stop there. His shrewd analysis of power and authority, individual incentives and collective action, management and regulation builds a bridge between law and politics as disciplines concerned about what global environmental governance is and how it can be improved.Õ Ð Maria Ivanova, University of Massachusetts, US ÔIn search of shelter from the buffeting blasts of climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, famine and disease, states and public agencies, community representatives, resource users, advocacy networks and citizens huddle together under the vast and varied institutional umbrellas of environmental governance. Louis KotzŽÕs innovative study systematically describes the role of environmental law as the springs, stretchers, ribs and handles of the decision-making umbrellas we so desperately hope will hold firm when they are opened up in times of need.Õ Ð Jamie Benidickson, University of Ottawa, Canada ÔThe concept of Òglobal environmental governanceÓ has been part of the lexicon in accounts of global environmental politics for some time. Yet to date it has escaped comprehensive assessment from a legal perspective. This groundbreaking work fills this gap in the literature. It offers a masterful analysis of the theoretical underpinnings of the environmental governance, and highlights the critical importance of environmental regulation in ensuring that environmental governance lives up to its promise as a means for achieving truly ecologically sustainable development.Õ Ð Tim Stephens, University of Sydney, Australia This timely book brings much-needed clarity to the concept of Ôenvironmental governanceÕ as manifested in the global regulatory domain. The author argues that despite being used as a fashionable term by many Ð including economists, political scientists, environmentalists and, increasingly, lawyers Ð its theoretical contours and conceptual content remain unclear, incoherent, and inconsistent. In addressing this problem, the book begins by describing globalization as a general context of governance. It comprehensively interrogates and clarifies both the governance and global governance concepts, and then explains aspects and components of global environmental governance. Finally it investigates the role of law in global environmental governance. Providing a much-needed definition of environmental governance and global environmental governance, this comprehensive study will appeal to academics and researchers, post-graduate and under-graduate students, intergovernmental organizations such as UNEP, WTO, IUCN, as well as governments and governmental agencies involved with environmental regulation.