International Environmental Governance

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.

Theoretical and empirical accounts of the role of business in shaping international environmental policies.

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.

Provides a comparative study of the role of international organizations in environmental governance and features case studies on the World Bank; OECD; the UN Environment Programme and secretariats to environmental treaties; and hybrid organizations.

International Environmental Governance: Towards UNEPO offers a significant contribution to practitioners and scholars involved in international debates regarding environmental governance. Clarifying the insufficiency of the 1972 UN General Assembly’s model of a small UN Environment Programme in helping nations stem the accumulating degradation of the environment across the globe, the work poses the remaining question: how should international environmental governance be accomplished? The volume is timely in its examination of the post-Rio+20 period, and furthermore addresses the vital issue of the evolution of UNEP into a ‘specialized agency’ designated the UN Environment Protection Organization (UNEPO), a ‘new mandate’ to revive the UN Trusteeship Council to supervise environment and the commons, as well as law-making and institution-building processes as reflected in multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) and other multilateral forms. International Environmental Governance: Towards UNEPO addresses the law-making challenge presented by growth in MEAs and proliferation of international environmental institutions, with a thorough consideration of the debate regarding the need for and efficacy of global governance in the field of environment. Dr. Desai’s timely analysis will assist diplomats, lawyers and scholars, citizens and civil servants alike in finding the new roads forward.

Yet many of its fundamental elements remain unclear in both theory and practice.

A plethora of environmental problems are ravaging the planet and its inhabitants. How well do existing structures convene governments to address these challenges? What is the role of science and civil society in this context? And, does international cooperation properly support countries with limited capacities? This report seeks to respond to these questions, based on an analysis of actions taken to renew international environmental governance to fulfill commitments made at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in 2012. This report outlines possibilities to strengthen the UN Environment Programme and to enhance synergies among global environmental conventions to ensure that international environmental governance continues evolving and improving to secure human well-being and planetary health.