Green Governance

The vast majority of the world's scientists agree: we have reached a point in history where we are in grave danger of destroying Earth's life-sustaining capacity. But our attempts to protect natural ecosystems are increasingly ineffective because our very conception of the problem is limited; we treat 'the environment' as its own separate realm, taking for granted prevailing but outmoded conceptions of economics, national sovereignty and international law. Green Governance is a direct response to the mounting calls for a paradigm shift in the way humans relate to the natural environment. It opens the door to a new set of solutions by proposing a compelling new synthesis of environmental protection based on broader notions of economics and human rights and on commons-based governance. Going beyond speculative abstractions, the book proposes a new architecture of environmental law and public policy that is as practical as it is theoretically sound.

This innovative book is one of the first to conduct a systematic comprehensive analysis of the ideals and practices of the evolving green state. It draws on elements of political theory, feminist theory, post-structuralism, governance and institutional theory to conceptualise the green state and advances thinking on how to understand its emergence in the context of climate and sustainability transitions. Focusing on the state as an actor in environmental, climate and sustainability politics, the book explores different principles guiding the emergence of the green state and examines the performance of states and institutional responses to the sustainable and climate transitions in the European and Nordic context in particular. The book’s unique focus on the Nordic countries underlines the important to learn from Nordics, which are perceived to be in the forefront of climate and sustainability governance as well as historically strong welfare states. With chapter contributions from leading international scholars in political science, sociology, economics, energy and environmental systems and climate policy studies, this book will be of great value to postgraduate students and researchers working on sustainability transitions, environmental politics and governance, and those with an area studies focus on the Nordic countries.

Today's most pressing environmental problems are planetary in scope, confounding the political will of any one nation. How can we solve them? Global Environmental Governance offers the essential information, theory, and practical insight needed to tackle this critical challenge. It examines ten major environmental threats-climate disruption, biodiversity loss, acid rain, ozone depletion, deforestation, desertification, freshwater degradation and shortages, marine fisheries decline, toxic pollutants, and excess nitrogen-and explores how they can be addressed through treaties, governance regimes, and new forms of international cooperation. Written by Gus Speth, one of the architects of the international environmental movement, and accomplished political scientist Peter M. Haas, Global Environmental Governance tells the story of how the community of nations, nongovernmental organizations, scientists, and multinational corporations have in recent decades created an unprecedented set of laws and institutions intended to help solve large-scale environmental problems. The book critically examines the serious shortcomings of current efforts and the underlying reasons why disturbing trends persist. It presents key concepts in international law and regime formation in simple, accessible language, and describes the current institutional landscape as well as lessons learned and new directions needed in international governance. Global Environmental Governance is a concise guide, with lists of key terms, study questions, and other features designed to help readers think about and understand the concepts discussed.

A unique publication that examines emerging and cutting-edge environmental issues from no less than seven countries including Africa and China. These issues are examined mainly from a trans-disciplinary environmental governance perspective that includes law, ecology, economics, policy and management. The contributors to the book include some exceptional young scholars. They, together with other contributors who are distinguished environmental legal experts, have advanced the scholarship of environmental governance. Koh Kheng-Lian, National University of Singapore This timely volume provides fascinating insights into emerging developments in the field of legal governance of the environment at a time when environmental governance is increasingly concerned with far more than legal doctrine. The expert contributors are concerned with the totality of arrangements through which power and resources are deployed to protect and restore natural resources, and how the costs and benefits of this are allocated. They explore key issues such as: how the community exercises its democratic rights; how government responds to the needs of current and future generations and balances the interests of the powerful with the powerless; the freedoms and responsibilities of commerce and the holders of property; and the ways in which laws and policies are informed by science and other perspectives. The various ways in which legal scholarship is pivotal to good governance are thus highlighted, as is the extent of innovation being generated by current ecological, economic and social challenges. Clearly demonstrating the increasing breadth and depth of environmental law scholarship, this thought-provoking book will prove an invaluable reference tool for academics, students and researchers focusing on environmental law and development.

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.

Rapid environmental change calls for individuals and societies with an ability to transform our interactions with each other and the ecosystems upon which we depend. Adaptive capacity - the ability of a social-ecological system (or the components of that system) to be robust to disturbances and capable of responding to changes - is increasingly recognized as a critical attribute of multi-level environmental governance. This unique volume offers the first interdisciplinary and integrative perspective on an emerging area of applied scholarship, with contributions from internationally recognized researchers and practitioners. It demonstrates how adaptive capacity makes environmental governance possible in complex social-ecological systems. Cutting-edge theoretical developments are explored and empirical case studies offered from a wide range of geographic settings and natural resource contexts, such as water, climate, fisheries and forestry. • Of interest to researchers, policymakers and resource managers seeking to navigate and understand social-ecological change in diverse geographic settings and resource contexts

Despite its tiny size and seeming marginality to world affairs, the Central American republic of Costa Rica has long been considered an important site for experimentation in cutting-edge environmental policy. From protected area management to ecotourism to payment for environmental services (PES) and beyond, for the past half-century the country has successfully positioned itself at the forefront of novel trends in environmental governance and sustainable development. Yet the increasingly urgent dilemma of how to achieve equitable economic development in a world of ecosystem decline and climate change presents new challenges, testing Costa Rica’s ability to remain a leader in innovative environmental governance. This book explores these challenges, how Costa Rica is responding to them, and the lessons this holds for current and future trends regarding environmental governance and sustainable development. It provides the first comprehensive assessment of successes and challenges as they play out in a variety of sectors, including agricultural development, biodiversity conservation, water management, resource extraction, and climate change policy. By framing Costa Rica as an “ecolaboratory,” the contributors in this volume examine the lessons learned and offer a path for the future of sustainable development research and policy in Central America and beyond.

Aligning global governance to the challenges of sustainability is one of the most urgent environmental issues to be addressed. This book is a timely and up-to-date compilation of the main pieces of the global environmental governance puzzle. The book is comprised of 101 entries, each defining a central concept in global environmental governance, presenting its historical evolution, introducing related debates and including key bibliographical references and further reading. The entries combine analytical rigour with empirical description. The book: offers cutting edge analysis of the state of global environmental governance, raises an up-to-date debate on global governance for sustainable development, gives an in-depth exploration of current international architecture of global environmental governance, examines the interaction between environmental politics and other fields of governance such as trade, development and security, elaborates a critical review of the recent literature in global environmental governance. This unique work synthesizes writing from an internationally diverse range of well-known experts in the field of global environmental governance. Innovative thinking and high-profile expertise come together to create a volume that is accessible to students, scholars and practitioners alike.