NGO’s Authority: A Discussion in the Global Environmental Governance

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-97
Author(s):  
Xiaolong Zou ◽  
Chuan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
International System ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
Sociological Institutionalism ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Important Position

As non-governmental organizations (NGOs) assume incrementally important roles in global environmental governance, literature regarding their functions also multiplies. Studies are available about their features, structural advantages or impacts. However, very few have sufficiently explained what makes them tick in the international system as non-state actors. In this article, we argue that NGOs’ important position in global governance lies in its authority. We build our analysis on sociological institutionalism and the principal–agent models, arguing that NGOs are independent and autonomous with both inherent authority and granted authority by sovereign states or inter-governmental organizations (IGOs). It is through this authority that NGOs could function independently and autonomously in global governance instead of being the affiliated or appendant actors of parties. To shed some new light on understanding NGOs in the international system from a theoretical perspective, we employ cases from environmental governance domain as evidence for illustration.

Global Environmental Governance

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John S. Dryzek
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Economic Governance ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Challenges ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Global Economic Governance ◽  
Dynamic Criteria

Long subordinate to global economic governance, global environmental governance currently fails to produce responses that match the urgency and depth of global environmental challenges, as well as being short on justice and democracy. Environmental political theory can speak to this condition though the critique of the deficiencies of governance, scrutiny of reform proposals, and development of dynamic criteria to seek in improved governance. At issue here are not just institutions generally recognized as environmental, but the system of global governance in its entirety. In the Anthropocene, ecosystemic reflexivity can be recognized as properly the first virtue of global environmental governance.

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 Inside Forest Diplomacy: A Case Study of the Congo Basin under Global Environmental Governance

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 525
Author(s):  
Minette Nago ◽  
Symphorien Ongolo
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
Congo Basin ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
Policy Document ◽  
Knowledge Resources ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Global Environmental

The growing global interest in biodiversity conservation and the role of forestland sustainability in climate change mitigation has led to the emergence of a new specific field of global environmental governance that we called ‘forest diplomacy’. With the largest tropical forest area after the Amazon, Congo Basin countries (CBc) constitute a major negotiation bloc within global forest-related governance arenas. Despite this position, CBc seem embedded in a failure trap with respect to their participation in forest diplomacy arenas. This paper examines the major causes of the recurrent failures of CBc within forest diplomacy. A qualitative empirical approach (including key informant interviews, groups discussion, participant observation, and policy document review) was used. From a conceptual and theoretical perspective, this research combines global and political sociology approaches including environmentality and blame avoidance works. The main finding reveals that the recurrent failures of CBc in forest diplomacy are partly due to the lack of strategic and bureaucratic autonomy of CBc that strongly depend on financial, technical, and knowledge resources from Western cooperation agencies or consultancy firms. Our discussion highlights that this dependency is maintained by most of the key actor groups involved in forest diplomacy related to CBc, as they exploit these failures to serve their private interests while avoiding the blame of not reducing deforestation and biodiversity loss in the Congo Basin.

scholarly journals Protests, Regulations, and Environmental Accountability in Cambodia

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sokphea Young
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Environmental Deterioration ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Foreign Corporations ◽  
Perceived Challenge

In the realm of global environmental governance, accountability has been key to the debate concerning pervasive environmental deterioration. Among the factors underlying this deterioration, a perceived challenge is the lack of clear mechanisms for identifying to whom the actors in environmental governance in general, and in other sectors, for example, hydropower, agricultural land, mining, and infrastructure in particular, are accountable to for their actions. To investigate the challenge of this situation, this article explores the ways in which the protest movements of grass-roots communities and non-governmental organizations endeavour to hold government and foreign corporations accountable for the actions they have taken which have contributed to environmental degradation in Cambodia. Drawing on two case studies, this article argues that these protest movements have played an increasing role in requiring environmental accountability from both government and corporations.

Challenging Global Environmental Governance: Social Movement Agency and Global Civil Society

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy H. Ford
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Global Civil Society ◽  
Toxic Waste ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
A Site

In line with a critical theoretical perspective, which sees global environmental governance as embedded in the wider neoliberal global political economy, this article argues that accounts of global environmental governance grounded in orthodox International Relations lack an analysis of agency and power relations. This is particularly visible in the problematic assertion that global civil society—where social movements are said to be located—presents a democratizing force for global environmental governance. Through a critical conceptualization of agency the article analyzes social movements (including NGOs) and the challenges to global environmental governance, with an illustration of movements campaigning against toxic waste. It suggests that the potentiality of radical social movement agency is best understood through a neo-Gramscian approach, which identifies global civil society as simultaneously a site for the maintenance of, as well as challenges to, hegemony. It explores the extent to which global social movements constitute a counter-hegemonic challenge.

Transparency for Whom? Information Disclosure and Power in Global Environmental Governance

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Mason
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Information Disclosure ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Information Access ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Disclosure ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Relations Of Power

Information disclosure is the most obvious manifestation of the transparency turn in global governance, as evident from a growing uptake of environmental disclosure practices by countries, corporations and international organizations. Any analytic examination of environmental disclosure measures needs to grasp their relation to wider configurations of political and economic authority. Highlighting these relations of power reveals that transparency measures do not necessarily overcome asymmetries in information access, and may even exacerbate them.

scholarly journals The National Context for Transparency-based Global Environmental Governance

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 120-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Florini
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
National Context ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global Environmental

Transparency-based global environmental governance, like all global governance, necessarily plays out in national contexts. Its efficacy is shaped not only by global politics but also by the norms and capacities prevailing within countries. Over the past two decades, there has been an extraordinary upheaval in transparency views and practices in numerous countries, rich and poor, democratic and authoritarian. This multi-faceted development has been driven by such varied factors as democratization, privatization, and changing views about appropriate regulatory practices. These changes provide the crucial context for understanding the transparency transformation that is currently unfolding within global environmental governance, as well as what its promise, limitations and implications in practice might be in diverse national contexts.

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