This document provides an overview of the organization of global environmental governance. It discusses how the environment emerged as a political issue in the 1960s-1970s and the key global conferences that have been held to address environmental problems, including the UN conferences in Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro, and Johannesburg. It also describes the roles of international cooperation, regimes, and organizations in global environmental governance and how states, intergovernmental organizations, and non-state actors influence governance processes.

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The Organization of
Global Environmental Governance
Gunilla Reischl, 9 March, 2015
Introduction
• What has the global community done to tackle
environmental problems?
• The history of global environmental governance is
affected by wider developments in global political
economy
• …and a history of international cooperation,
diplomatic efforts, institutional creation, treaty
making and negotiations

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Outline of the lecture
• Environment as political issue
• Interstate regimes  global governance
• Practice and functions of GEG/GEP
1960s and
1970s

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1980s
1990s

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The emergence of the environment as an issue
area
• International environmental issues have
become part of the public agenda in the past
four decades
• Gradual expansion of scientific knowledge
enabled to verify environmental degradation
• The rise of environment-oriented civil society
associations
The UN Framework
• UN has played an important role in the
international response of environmental
problems
• Problems with participation and
implementation, the lowest common
denominator
• The state that have the least interest in
achieving an agreement sets the agenda

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Global conferences (summits)
Stockholm 1972
UN Conference on
the Human
Environment
•Tension between
environment and
development –
developing countries
viewed it as a problem
for the developed
countries
•Principle of national
sovereignty over
natural resources
•Creation of UNEP
•’Awareness-raising’
Rio de Janeiro 1992
UN Conference on
Environment and
Development
• End of Cold war –
’window of
opportunity’
• Environment and
development.
Developing countries
saw opportunities for
ODA
• Political success?
• Agenda 21 – ’To do
list’
Johannesburg 2002
World Summit on
Sustainable
Development
•Follow up of Rio
•Marked by 11
September – war on
terrorism
•Focus on social
development -
’poverty eradication’
•Implementation
Rio de Janeiro 2012
UN Conference on
Sustainable
Development
Green economy
Institutional
framework
Environmentalproblem Internationalagreements (e.g.)
Climate change UNFCCC (1992)
Kyoto Protocol (1997)
Depletion of ozone layer Vienna Convention (1985)
Montreal Protocol (1987)
Biologicaldiversity Convention on BiologicalDiversity
(1992)
Cartagena Protocol (2000)
CITES(1973)
Deforestation IPF (1995-97)
IFF (1997-2000)
UNFF (2000-)
Desertification UNCCD (1994)

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Interstate cooperation and regimes
• When the international dimension of environmental problems was
first being considered seriously, there was a dominant academic
concern: international cooperation as a mean to their solution
The problem :
“Can a fragmented and often highly conflictual political system made
up of over 170 sovereign states and numerous other actors achieve the
high levels of cooperation and policy coordination needed to manage
environmental problems on a global scale?”
(Hurren and Kingsbury 1992: 1)
International cooperation
• Approached from an institutional angle, i.e.
international treaties, organizations and other
arrangements
• Political science and IR: the field of regime theory and
more recently on the field of global governance
• The primacy of states was usually taken for granted
• Assumption of international anarchy and the need to
provide something comparable to a world government

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Source of confusion
• International institution
• International regime
• International organisation
International institutions
• Though a range of usages exists, most scholars in this
context have come to regard international institutions as
sets of rules meant to govern international behavior.
• For example:
‘sets of rules that stipulate the ways in which states should
cooperate and compete with each other’ (Mearsheimer
1994/95) (ironically a neorealist who doesn’t believe that
institutions are effective)
(Rules are often conceived as statements that forbid,
require, or permit particular kinds of actions (Ostrom
1990:139). )

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International Regimes: definition
• International regimes can be defined as sets of
implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and
decision-making procedures around which
actors’ expectations converge in a given area
of international relations. (Krasner, 1983, p2)
International Regimes
• Response to the demand of governance in a
specific issue area
• Institutional frameworks with formal rules and
informal practices
• Shape and constrain actors behaviour

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Interstate cooperation and regimes
• Intellectually based on the works that had emerged in the field of
international political economy since the 1970s
• The regime concept was used to understand how cooperation under
anarchy could occur in international economic relations
• The concept of a regime often attributed to Ruggie (1975) and developed
and defined by Krasner (1983) as means of describing and analyzing
international cooperation
• The regime centered liberal institutionalist approach provided means to
comprehend the rapid developmentof MEAs during the 1980s and 1990s
Non-regimes
• One debate has focused on if an issue area is a regime or not. This
discussion has been particular prominent in the context of environmental
issues.
• The concept of ‘non-regimes’ has emerged:
• “A public policy arena characterizedby the absence of an interstate policy
agreement where states have either tried or failed to create one, or when
governments have not even initiated negotiations”(Dimitrov, 2006: 9).
• Example: deforestation, but contested

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Regime complexes
Keohane and Victor 2010
International organisations
• Most international organizations are
embedded in larger international regimes.
• International bureaucratic structures
connected to norm and rule systems
• Characterized by: permanent headquarter,
secretariat, members, budget

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International institutions
• International institution: Though a range of usages exists, most scholars
have come to regard international institutions as sets of rules (explicit
and/or implicit)meantto govern international behavior.
• International regime: describes principles, norms, rules and decision-
making procedures within an issue area.
• International organization: international bureaucratic structures
connected to norm and rule systems: characterized by: permanent
headquarter, secretariat, members, budget.
 Within international politics the term international institution increasingly
is used as an umbrella term for all forms of institutionalized cooperation at
international level
Rise of Global Governance
2 major trends over past 50 years:
1. Gradual loss of national sovereignty
2. Rise of complex policy problems
 Increased focus on global governance

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Global governance
A key theme in international environmental politics
Capture the overarching set of arrangements, which goes beyond individual
issue areas
Connects IEP to more general patterns of global politics
Variation in how the term global environmental governanceis used.
Global governance as characterized:
• Multi-actor
• New mechanisms of organization alongside
the traditional system
• Multilevel

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Who?
• Economically powerful TNCs tend to have
more access points
• Among civil society actors: well organized and
well funded NGOs tend to be overrepresented
whereas marginalized groups tend to be highly
underrepresented

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How?
• Formal participation by transnational actors in
decision-making bodies remains extremely rare
• Transnational actors increasingly enjoy access
and contribute to agenda setting,
implementation, and enforcement but largely
remain excluded from the core of international
cooperation: the decision-making stage
Influence of non-state actors
• The increase of influence by other actors does
not ipso facto mean a decreasing influence by
states.
• The increasing influence of other actors should
be seen as causing changing dynamics of politics,
rather than in terms of a power transfer.
• TNCs, NGOs and governments can sometimes
form coalitions
 So the point here is that states and transnational
actors share “the stage”, and this creates new
dynamics of politics.

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Actor strategies
• States: coalitions
• NGOs: networks
Organization of NGOs and sub-national actors,
self-organization. Important for
implementation , innovative mechanisms such
as benchmarking
Actors
STATES
EU
G77
JUSCANZ
Umbrella Group
EIG
NON-STATE
INDUSTRY ENV.
HUMAN
RIGHTS
INTERGOVERNMENTAL
ORG. (IGOs)
FAO
UNEP
WTO
WORLD
BANK

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A negotiation process
Conference of the
Parties (CoP)
Generally once a year
EU-coordinationon spot. EU
speaks with one voice
EU-coordination
Meetings in Brussels
Formation of a common EU
position.
Swedish preparation
Within the government
offices with actors
concerned. Formulation of
a Swedish position
Intersessional meetings
Technical/scientific meetings

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Discussion
• How can we take account of environmental
challenges that do not fit the existing patterns
of cooperation?
• How would the ideal way to organize global
environmental governance look like?