Part I Context, Ch.4 Multilevel and Polycentric Governance

This chapter discusses leading conceptual approaches to international environmental governance. These approaches draw on arguments found in diverse literatures, including writings on fiscal federalism, the new institutionalism, international relations, and international law. The chapter first reviews a prominent set of arguments in favour of decentralized environmental governance, and a competing set of claims in favour of greater centralization of governance authority. These approaches, in general, seek to produce the appropriate ‘match’ between the level or scope of governance and the level or scope of the relevant environmental issue. The chapter then considers ‘multilevel governance’ (MLG), an approach that does not view the allocation of authority among levels as mutually exclusive but rather explores how authority can be simultaneously exercised by multiple agents. It also looks at approaches that emphasize the horizontal sharing of governance authority. Finally, the chapter presents strategies for advancing understanding of international environmental governance.

Part VI Actors, Ch.39 Sub-National Actors

This chapter explores the evolving role of sub-national actors in international environmental law. As a matter of formal law, international environmental law is formed among sovereign nation-states; sub-national actors are treated as sub-units of their nation-states. However, sub-national actors, through transnational networks, are playing a growing role in international environmental governance. The chapter focuses on three aspects of sub-national actors' participation in international environmental law. First, it considers why including sub-national actors is crucial to solving international environmental problems. Second, it examines the emergence of networks interacting with international environmental law-making and each other at transnational, national, and sub-national scales. Third, it analyses how those networks interact directly with the formal processes of international environmental law-making and develop the parallel voluntary agreements in which sub-national actors pledge to uphold commitments made by nation-states.

Peacebuilding Functions of International Environmental Governance

This chapter seeks to focus on ‘peacebuilding’ as a construct of peace among groups that have previously been in conflict. This calls for moving beyond peacemaking and conflict resolution to consider the longer-term efforts at establishing sustainable peace. Notwithstanding the longstanding efforts of UNEP’s Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch, there has been very limited development of international normative and institutional structures targeting the process of post-conflict sustainable peacebuilding. How far the current international environmental governance (IEG) regimes are responsive to the specific challenges to post-conflict situations? It seeks to briefly consider four key aspects of IEG regimes: (i) Ad- hoc and subject specific (ii) Incremental and facilitative (iii) Degree of reciprocity and (iv) Science-based.

A New Environmental Charter for the Future

The environmental crisis compels humanity to redefine its relationship with nature. This calls for the principles that would guide the new pathway to be outlined and enshrined into a global treaty. An environmental charter for the future would serve the purpose of a social contract and define the norms which would allow humanity to coexist with its natural environment. In this context, this chapter argues that faith in the international system could be restored by a global agreement on the basic principles which are to guide the new system for international environmental governance. It will thus first focus on (i) exposing the merits of principles in a legal system, (ii) tackling the purely technical vision that weakens both the creation and implementation of international environmental law and (iii) finally, it will make the case for a global environmental charter that would enshrine fundamental principles and rejuvenate the values that founded the international system.

Ecofeminism revisited: critical insights on contemporary environmental governance

Echoing other articles in this special issue, this article re-evaluates a collection of feminist works that fell out of fashion as a consequence of academic feminism embracing poststructuralist and postmodernist trends. In line with fellow contributors, the article critically reflects upon the unsympathetic reading of feminisms considered to be essentialising and universalistic, in order to re-evaluate, in my case, ecofeminism. As an introduction, I reflect on my own perhaps unfair rejection of ecofeminism as a doctoral researcher and early career academic who, in critiquing 1990s international environmental governance, sought to problematise the essentialist premise on which it appeared to be based. The article thereafter challenges this well-rehearsed critique by carefully revisiting a sample of ecofeminist work produced between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. In an effort to avoid wholesale abandonment of the wealth of feminist theory often labelled as second wave, or the rendering of feminisms of the past as redundant as feminist theory changes over time, this article re-reads the work of ecofeminists, such as Starhawk, Susan Griffin and Vandana Shiva, to demonstrate their contemporary relevance. In so doing, the article argues that a contemporary re-reading of ecofeminism offers insights allowing for a radical rethinking of contemporary environmental governance.

The Science-Policy Nexus: U.S. Policy and International Environmental Governance

In June 1991 I was reassigned from the Bureau of Near East Affairs within the U [...]

Marine Pollution in Indonesia and the Regulatory Framework

Oil pollution and marine plastic pollution (MPP) in Indonesian waters have been causing concerns for decades. This article examines the adequacy of the existing Indonesian legislation on oil pollution and MPP consistent with international environmental governance regimes. It is argued that the current Indonesian laws and regulations for dealing with oil pollution and marine debris are inadequate tools to effectively combat the environmental threats from oil pollution and MPP. This article demonstrates the gaps remaining in implementing the relevant legal framework, namely through the rules of a strict liability and MPP, to address marine pollution in Indonesian waters.