1. The Developing Countries Shadow Global Environmental Governance.
- Author
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Najam, Adil
- Subjects
- *
ECONOMIC development , *EMERGING markets , *ENVIRONMENTALISM , *ENVIRONMENTAL ethics , *ENVIRONMENTAL policy , *ENVIRONMENTAL protection ,DEVELOPING countries - Abstract
Developing countries and developing country scholars have long (and rightly) argued that international politics, and within that global environmental politics, have ignored them and their interests. Indeed, a basic tenant of ?Southernness? is the strong belief that the countries of the South and their interests lies (or have been marginalized to) the periphery of the global agenda; that developing countries have the space to react to the global agenda but do not possess (and have not been allowed) the means to proactively shape this agenda. This paper will not dispute this stream of thinking but will suggest that precisely because developing countries have been wary of the international environmental agenda, and because they have been reactive, they have inadvertently had a significant impact on the evolution of the global environmental governance architecture. Using the lens of three key debates in the evolution of the global environmental architecture ? the creation of UNEP in 1972, the creation of CSD and the restructuring of the GEF in 1992, and the attempt to create a new environmental organization in the late 1990s-to-date ? this paper will chart the consistency of developing country interests on global governance (as articulated by the G77) and depict how the developing country fear of global environmental governance has had a deep impact on the current ?system? of global environmental governance. In tracing the Southern impact on the institutions of global environmental governance, the paper will review the early years of UNEP when its placement in Kenya and its original agenda was shaped very much by developing country reluctance towards the emergent environmental agenda. The restructuring of the GEF was, similarly, shaped not simply by the industrialized will to invest in certain issues but also by developing country fears. The CSD, on the other hand, was actually demanded by developing countries themselves. While none of these institutions can be claimed as an astounding success, these examples do point out that Southern reactiveness in global environmental politics has not been without impact. As with so many other arenas of global politics, developing country attitudes towards global governance need to be understood not as moves which try to maximize gains but as moves that seek to minimize losses. The same strategy is seen in the Southern reaction to recent reforms in International Environmental governance. Once again, developing countries are motivated not by the desire to construct a system that will be conducive to their interests (they do not believe that such a system is possible within the existing status quo). They are motivated, instead, by a desire to ensure that any emergent system is no worse than the existing one. It is both interesting and instructional that this reactive stance has had significant impacts on the prevailing system of global environmental governance. Most particularly in the adoption of sustainable development as a now universally accepted goal of environmental governance. Indeed, it could be argued that the prevailing system of global environmental governance has been structured as much by Northern environmental proacctivism as by Southern reactiveness. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2006