scholarly journals The Rise of the Region in Global Environmental Politics

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 127-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Conca
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Common Property ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Norm Diffusion ◽  
Ethical Argument ◽  
Track Record ◽  
Causal Direction ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Common Property Resource Management

This essay examines some of the reasons for the upsurge in interest in regional approaches to global environmental challenges. One reason is a growing sense of obstruction and drift at the global level. With the rate of formation of new global environmental agreements lagging, with many existing agreements seemingly stalled, and with the momentum of global summitry having faded, regions may seem a more pragmatic scale at which to promote the diffusion of ideas, the development of institutions, and social mobilization for change. Beyond political pragmatism, there are also conceptually interesting—if still debatable—arguments that regions hold promise for strengthening global environmental governance. The regional scale may offer superior conditions to the global for common-property resource management—although the historical track record seems mixed at best, and formidable barriers to collective action remain. Regions may be more conducive to promoting norm diffusion—although the causal direction appears to be more strongly global-to-regional than vice versa. However the conceptual promise of the regional scale plays out in practice, there is also a compelling ethical argument for a regional focus, as mitigation failures at the global level condemn particular locales to formidable challenges of adaptation.

The politics of global environmental governance: the powers and limitations of transfrontier conservation areas in Central America

2005 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosaleen Duffy
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Conservation Areas ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Transfrontier Conservation

This article examines the concepts and practices of global governance as a definitively liberal project. It provides an analysis of how TFCAs intersect with wider neoliberal debates about the efficacy of global environmental governance, and explores the power and limitations of that governance. In particular, this article investigates the complex local contexts which global environmental governance schemes such as TFCAs encounter; in so doing it highlights the ways that local activities subvert and challenge global-level conservation schemes. Through an analysis of transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) in Central America, it contends that specific forms of global environmental governance require some rethinking to accommodate their potentially fragile and uneven nature, and that it is more open, opaque or uneven than many theorists suggest.

scholarly journals Private Environmental Governance and International Relations: Exploring the Links

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Falkner
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
International Negotiations ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Private Governance ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental

This article discusses private environmental governance at the global level. It is widely acknowledged that corporations play an increasing role in global environmental politics, not only as lobbyists in international negotiations or agents of implementation, but also as actors creating private institutional arrangements that perform environmental governance functions. The rise of such private forms of global governance raises a number of questions for the study of global environmental politics: How does private governance interact with state-centric governance? In what ways are the roles/capacities of states and nonstate actors affected by private governance? Does the rise of private governance signify a shift in the ideological underpinnings of global environmental governance? This article explores these questions, seeking a better understanding of the significance of private environmental governance for International Relations.

The Macondoization of the World

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-78
Author(s):  
Noah J. Toly
Keyword(s):  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Deepwater Horizon ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

This chapter argues that globalization has made possible both environmental catastrophe, as symbolized by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and attempts to grasp and manage environmental change at the global level. Governing global environmental challenges in the face of the tragic requires some good by which we may discriminate between competing and often incommensurable goods, some mechanism for apprehending the tragic, justifying certain choices in the face of the tragic, and patterning or teaching acceptable responses to the tragic. The rise of religious imaginaries in global governance has opened the door further to religious ways of thinking about the tragic in global environmental governance.

A UN Specialized Agency for the Environment

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Said Mahmoudi
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Financial Stability ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Institutional Arrangement ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Stockholm Conference

The issue, international organization for the protection of the environment perhaps more than those in any other area of international law, is characterized by the contestation of the policies and aspirations of developing and industrialized countries. The discussions which preceded the 1972 Stockholm Conference concerned partly the type of international institutional arrangement required for addressing the environmental problems. As regards the institutional reforms with respect to international environmental governance (IEG), the main question is whether to focus on the existing global institution, i.e. UNEP, or to create a new functional international organization. After almost five decades of existence, turning UNEP into a ‘specialized agency’ within the UN system is a reasonable move. It would meet the long-felt need to elevate its status and equip it with the necessary competence and financial stability for the demanding task it should have as an efficient global environmental organization.

scholarly journals Exemplary Ethical Communities. A New Concept for a Livable Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5582
Author(s):  
Daniele Conversi
Keyword(s):  
Large Body ◽  
State System ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Sustainable Communities ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Track Record ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Global Environmental

This article argues that we need to look at living examples provided by non-state communities in various regions of the world that are, perhaps unwittingly, contributing to the maintenance of the Earth’s optimal thermal balance. These fully sustainable communities have been living outside the mainstream for centuries, even millennia, providing examples in the global struggle against the degradation of social–ecological systems. They have all, to varying degrees, embraced simple forms of living that make them ‘exemplary ethical communities’ (EECs)—human communities with a track record of sustainability related to forms of traditional knowledge and the capacity to survive outside the capitalist market and nation-state system. The article proceeds in three steps: First, it condenses a large body of research on the limits of the existing nation-state system and its accompanying ideology, nationalism, identifying this institutional–ideological complex as the major obstacle to tackling climate change. Second, alternative social formations that could offer viable micro-level and micro-scale alternatives are suggested. These are unlikely to identify with existing nation-states as they often form distinct types of social communities. Taking examples from hunter-gatherer societies and simple-living religious groups, it is shown how the protection and maintenance of these EECs could become the keystone in the struggle for survival of humankind and other forms of life. Finally, further investigation is called for, into how researchers can come forward with more examples of actually existing communities that might provide pathways to sustainability and resistance to the looming global environmental catastrophe.

Movements, Networks, Hierarchies: A Gender Perspective on Global Environmental Governance

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Bretherton
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Participatory Process ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Transnational Mobilization ◽  
Environmentally Sound

Environmental governance may be distinguished from environmental management by the implication that, in the former, some form of participatory process is involved. Here, the focus is upon the potential for women's movements and networks to influence the principles and practices of global environmental governance (GEG). It is contended that, in principle, women are uniquely placed to oppose the dominant norms informing GEG; and that women's participation would, in consequence, be crucial to the achievement of equitable and environmentally sound forms of governance. In practice, however, a number of factors combine to create divisions between women, and hence to impede transnational mobilization by women around environmental issues. This article examines these issues.

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