Global Environmental Diplomacy

"International environmental agreements have increased exponentially within the last five decades. However, decisions on policies to address key issues such as biodiversity loss, climate change, ozone depletion, hazardous waste transport, and numerous other planetary challenges require individual countries to adhere to international norms. Environmental Diplomacy: Negotiating More Effective Global Agreements provides an accessible narrative on understanding the geopolitics of negotiating international environmental agreements and clear guidance on improving the current system. Authors Lawrence Susskind and Saleem Ali expertly observe international environmental negotiations to effectively inform the reader on the geopolitics of protecting our planet. This second edition offers an additional perspective from the Global South as well as providing a broader analysis of the role of science in environmental treaty-making. It provides a unique contribution as a panoramic analysis of the process of environmental treaty-making"--Unedited summary from book cover.

Bringing together contributions from diplomats, UN agency officials, lawyers and academics, this book provides insight into the evolution of international environmental law, diplomacy and negotiating techniques. Based on first-hand experiences and extensive research, the chapters offer a blend of practice and theory, history and analysis, presenting a range of historical episodes and nuances and drawing lessons for future improvements to the processes of law-making and diplomacy. The book represents a synthesis of the most important messages to emerge from the annual course on Multilateral Environmental Agreements, delivered to diplomats and negotiators from around the world for the last decade by the University of Eastern Finland and the United Nations Environment Programme. The book will be of interest as a guide for negotiators and as a supplementary textbook and a reference volume for a wide range of students of law and environmental issues.

Tolba tells the story of the negotiations that led to a number of landmark agreements, such as the Vienna Convention on Ozone and its Montreal Protocol, the Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes, and the Biodiversity Convention.

International environmental agreements have increased exponentially within the last five decades. However, decisions on policies to address key issues such as biodiversity loss, climate change, ozone depletion, hazardous waste transport and numerous other planetary challenges require individual countries to adhere to international norms. What have been the successes and failures in the environmental treaty-making arena? How has the role of civil society and scientific consensus contributed to this maturing process? Why have some treaties been more enforceable than others and which theories of international relations can further inform efforts in this regard? Addressing these questions with renewed emphasis on close case analysis makes this volume a timely and thorough postscript to the Rio-Plus 20 summit's celebrated invocation document, The Future We Want, towards sustainable development. Environmental Diplomacy: Negotiating More Effective Global Agreements provides an accessible narrative on understanding the geopolitics of negotiating international environmental agreements and clear guidance on improving the current system. In this book, authors Lawrence Susskind and Saleem Ali expertly observe international environmental negotiations to effectively inform the reader on the geopolitics of protecting our planet. This second edition offers an additional perspective from the Global South as well as providing a broader analysis of the role of science in environmental treaty-making. It provides a unique contribution as a panoramic analysis of the process of environmental treaty-making.

Foreword by Mario Molina As Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) from 1976 to 1992, Mostafa K. Tolba had as much insight into, and influence on, the development of international environmental policy as anyone. In this book, he tells the story of the negotiations that led to a number of landmark agreements, such as the Vienna Convention on Ozone and its Montreal Protocol, the Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes, and the Biodiversity Convention. The book stands as the legacy of an important and charismatic figure who played a pivotal role during the first phase of global environmental diplomacy. Tolba concentrates on the context in which governments conclude that particular issues are ripe for binding international cooperation and on the factors that influence them during negotiations—such as science, the media, nongovernmental organizations, politicians, business and industry, and the public. The areas he discusses include the evolution of environmental law, environmental soft laws (principles and guidelines rather than treaties), binding regional regimes such as the Regional Seas Program and the Shared Freshwater Resources Program, the ozone layer, global warming, hazardous wastes, the loss of biological diversity, and ways to make international agreements work.

Since the early 1990s, there are two increasingly hot topics attracting numerous scholarly attentions in Chinese politics: first, it is the transformation of China's political system. Second, it is China's increasingly involvement in international regimes. Nevertheless, until now, there are only a few scholars to work out the distinctive relations between them, and even less people work on the bureaucratic politics level. By explaining and evaluating the development of policymaking coordination in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the author demonstrates the argument that international regimes have contributed to the development of coordination in Chinese Policymaking, taking the UNFCCC as a departure.

Broadhead (political science, University College of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia) writes from a "deepening concern that the very way environmental issues are thought about and the negotiations that result from their common framing are themselves leading to the further deterioration of the natural environment." The author owes her brand of critique to the Frankfurt School, especially in terms of its analysis of the Enlightenment notion of nature: scientifically knowable and technologically domitable. Showing how Enlightenment thought informs international relations, Broadhead targets "green diplomacy," the way that national and international financial bodies counter environmental critique; how globalization is sold as inevitable, irresistible, and beneficial; and how international agreements on ozone depletion and climate change fail their stated aims. So as not to end in dialectic negation, Broadhead offers positive alternatives to green diplomacy. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR