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U.S. global environmental policy during the Bush administration was widely considered to have fallen short of both global and national needs. Among other actions, critics faulted the administration's disparagement of scientific consensus on climate change and its withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, its ideological opposition to multilateral population assistance, its failure to exercise leadership on global sustainability initiatives, and a diversity of foreign policy decisions that have cost the United States much needed political support in critical regions of the world. This paper reviews some of the most important of these policy actions and looks ahead to the challenges Barack Obama will face as the 44th U.S. president. In particular, the paper examines the unique opportunities in 2009 and over the next several years for policy reassessment in energy use and climate change, population and development assistance, and sustainable development initiatives. It also considers the key policy actors who will likely play significant roles in the design, adoption, and implementation of a new generation of policies that can better address existing and emerging global environmental and resource problems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partnerships have become an intrinsic part of global environmental governance, especially since the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, where more than 200 Partnerships for Sustainable Development were launched as official outcomes. Even before ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost two decades have now passed since the launching of the Mediterranean Action Plan since 1975. A number of similar regional initiatives were launched throughout Europe since then as, for instance, the Barcelona, Helsinki, Oslo and Paris Conventions on coastal areas. Concerning mountain areas, the Alpine Convention was opened for signature in 1991 and it was followed in 2003 by its "sister" Carpathian Convention. This paper proposes an appraisal of the design of the Alpine Convention in the light of how it was written, one decade of implementation and how it is impacting the development of the Carpathian Convention and future multilateral agreements for the protection and sustainable development of other mountain regions. While the former had remarkable effects on the design of both conventions, the latter strongly impacted their respective implementation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study asks how competing knowledge claims access and influence the assessments of GMO applications, drawing on experiences from Norway. Norway is one of the most restrictive countries on the GMO issue, with potential lessons and insights for a broader audience. A central focus is what is accepted as relevant and legitimate knowledge in this type of decision-making processes. The case study examines whether there have been changes in the evaluations made over time and how these changes may be explained. Among explanatory factors is the emergence of new arguments and the effect of external developments, primarily changes in the EU. Norway resembles the most reluctant EU member states, which may, however, be losing ground within the EU in the aftermath of the so-called moratorium on GMOs. Second, the argumentation applied in GMO evaluations has become increasingly varied and comprehensive in the space of a period of about 10 years. Norways Gene Technology Act differs from similar acts in its additional criteria that applications must be judged according to their effect on sustainable development and societal utility. This potentially provides Norwegian authorities with a carte blanche in rejecting the applications, but it is also clear that the authorities prefer to harmonise the procedures with those of the EU. A third central feature affecting the Norwegian GMO evaluations is that no important sub-national groups in Norway stand to lose from eventual rejections of GMO applications. Hence, there is room for a quite diverse number of knowledge claims. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines the application and conception of sustainable development, and then seeks alternative theories or visions for the global "economy." In this work distinction is drawn between chrematistics and economics. This approach is extremely helpful in the translation from normative theories to practical politics. As one alternative I look at the "new" old radicalism including "descroissance," a bifurcated theory/cum movement currently inspiring environmentalists, scholars cum/and activists, in Geneva and Paris. A third approach is original in that it builds on the Aristotilean concept of "economic" and "economy," and looks into theories of knowledge and meanings attached to life. The intent is to find fresh concepts for building a global environmental theory with a view to practical application. It involves a search into the history of science and the nature of happiness. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development assistance agencies and banks make much of their funding for resource management conditional on the environmental sustainability of the projects and the use of participatory methods. Unfortunately, the efficacy of these conditionalities is limited by the unwillingness or inability of funders to enforce their own requirements and of recipient governments to abide by them. Nevertheless, these problems may be overcome by alliances of mid-level funding agency officials, officers of the implementing agencies of recipient states, and local NGOs and grassroots stakeholders. These "triple alliances" can avoid attempts by national governments to administer development assistance in ways that undermine the linked goals of sustainability and stakeholder empowerment, and overcome the tendency of funders to make only superficial efforts to enforce their own conditionalities. An examination of two cases from the Eastern Caribbean (a forest policy process in Grenada and a marine reserve in Dominica) shows how particular implementation strategies and dedicated personnel may achieve at least a partial fulfillment of the new conditionalities. The optimistic implication of this research is that development assistance can be a positive factor in sustainable development if it is part of an effort to institutionalize direct, sustained and constructive relationships among funders, recipient governments, and affected communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been evident for some time that trade policy and environmental policy cannot long pretend to ignore each other’s existence. Conceptually, each is an integral element of sustainable development; which, ostensibly, is a stated goal of both. Practically, they already cast long shadows on each other and the actual implementation of each influences, and is influenced by, the other. After years of tortured public discussion on the subject, the Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), held in Doha, Qatar, finally placed a limited set of trade and environment issues on the negotiating agenda of the multilateral trading system. The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg, South Africa, reaffirmed the need to establish more coherence between trade policy and environmental policy. Limited as these incursions might be, they suggest a trend and a tendency that is likely to be irreversible. It has been argued that within the context of the WTO, the question is no longer whether trade and environmental policy are going to be linked, but how. The answer, of course, is far from clear because a) the Doha mandate on trade and environment was left purposely vague; b) the issue is new to multilateral trade negotiations and its many implications and manifestations have not yet been fully explored; and c) because of that, parties have yet to fully develop and firm their positions on this subject as they have on many others. For all of these reasons, there is an opportunity for all parties to shape the agenda on future trade and environment negotiations in rather more profound ways than might be possible on many other issues. This opportunity is particularly pertinent to the developing countries of the South because they, for most part, have been generally suspicious of environmental issues seeping into trade deliberations and accepted the Doha mandate for trade and environmental negotiations rather hesitantly, if not grudgingly. The purpose of this paper is to better understand Southern concerns about the forthcoming trade and environment negotiations and to explore how an emergent Southern agenda might take shape. The analysis presented here derives directly from a review of Southern views on trade and environment issues compiled as part of an ICTSD/IISD/RING research project on the ‘Southern Agenda for Trade and Environment.’ While a budding literature on the subject does exist, this project was an early attempt to systematically collect and analyze the views of developing country delegates themselves. Methodologically, two distinct ‘data’ sets were constructed. The first compiles together the various formal interventions and proposals made by developing countries within the WTO; most particularly within the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE). The second data set of Southern views on environment and development is drawn from several months of consultations and discussions with developing country negotiators in Geneva and Brussels. These small group discussions sought to elicit a first-hand articulation of Southern concerns and interests in relation to trade and environment issues from developing country delegates, especially in terms of the post-Doha negotiation agenda. This paper presents a review and synthesis of the learning from these two data sets of Southern views on trade and environment. The research concludes that although the developing countries are likely to adopt a conservative strategy in negotiating the environment and trade aspects of the Doha workplan, this is to be expected. This is because developing countries a) had initially resisted these provisions, b) are the historically weaker parties and therefore prone to risk-minimizing strategies, and c) the newness of this issue for trade negotiations coupled with the resource and time strains on Southern delegations will itself limit the scope of innovation by any party. The previous section has outlined three key ingredients of the South’s post-Doha concerns that are likely to influence the defensive aspects of the South’s negotiation position between now, and January 2005. However, the more important conclusion relates to the emerging willingness within the developing countries to begin engaging the trade and environment agenda and to possibly re-craft it within the framework of sustainable development. This is neither going to be easy, nor automatic. While it is to the obvious benefit of the South (and many other parties) for the developing countries to adopt a proactive strategy, doing so will require much effort from the South itself and a supporting environment from other actors interested in a furthering the links between trade, environment and sustainable development. What can the South do itself to move from a reactive agenda defined by its apprehensions about trade and environment to a proactive agenda that seeks the opportunities to be realized by defining sustainable development as the goal of international trade? How can other international actors assist? The paper will outline four key steps in this direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Pacific is at the crossroads of all environmental and sustainable development issues. It is one of the richest areas of the world in terms of the diversity of its environment. However, it is also one of the most fragile and vulnerable regions. However ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the end of the Cold War and through subsequent waves of EU enlargement the Baltic Sea region (BSR) has become an integral part of the European Union. However, international and transnational cooperation in the area of environmental policy and sustai ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on conceptualizations from International Political Economy and Global Environmental Politics to examine the discursive space and technologies that have come to constitute recent transfrontier conservation approaches. In this discursive space, an ecological/scientific discourse of bioregionalism views organisms and ecological processes as crossing political borders and management entails an application of economic neoliberalism that reduce social and ecological processes to a single metric of profit or loss which can then be tapped by the "market." By privileging expert scientific knowledge and a trans-boundary territoriality and a market-driven standardization, contemporary eco-regional approaches driven by international conservation organizations propose the creation of "govermentalized localities" that are linked through transnational spaces. The paper dismantles these assumptions by elaborating issues at the intersection of power/knowledge, institutional arrangements, and subjectivity formation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last several years political scientists and environmental economists have started to investigate the cross-national differences in environmental policy performance and its political causes. To date, the most sustained attention in empirical studies has concentrated on differences in environmental policy between democracies and non-democracies. These studies are subject to three criticisms. First, these studies do an inadequate job of conceptualizing and measuring “environmental policy performance.” For example, almost all existing studies focus on only one or two environmental problemsâ€"sulfur dioxide pollution deforestation, access to safe drinking water, lead content on gasolineâ€"and fail to ask whether such pollutants are “representative” of environmental performance more broadly. Second, the empirical results of many of these papers raise a number of basic methodological problems that seems to impugn their empirical results. Finally, these studies tell us little about whether different types of democratic institutionsâ€"electoral laws, constitutional separation of powers, and so forthâ€"affect environmental performance differently between countries and over time. Our paper, which develops a cross-national dataset of developed and developing countries, provides advances on all three of these fronts. First, we provide a systematic evaluation of national performance measures. We critically evaluate previous work and develop a multi-dimensional measure that should provide a more accurate indication of national environmental performance. Second, we evaluate the statistical robustness of previous findings and their substantive significance. Finally, we take evaluate recent theoretical findings (e.g., Perrson and Tabelini’s work) which suggest that different democratic rules tend to produce very different environmental policy performance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the process of issue framing surrounding climate change in the Netherlands. The primary purpose is to identify and discuss the norms that constitute the climate change meanings held by the Dutch which in turn construct their identity, interests, and subsequent actions in a recursive process. This chapter asks two broad questions. What norms have influenced the Dutch definition of, and response to, climate change? Recursively, how have the Dutch come to redefine and promote these norms domestically and internationally over time? More specifically, this study seeks to uncover the processes of norm definition, adoption, and diffusion, employed by the principal norm entrepreneurs who have framed the social construction of climate change in the Dutch context. Several norms are apparent in Dutch climate change policy. The primary norm addressed is sustainable development with several embedded norms that embody the unique Dutch definition of sustainable development vis-à-vis their understanding of climate change and environmental degradation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In times of a globalised economy not only are environmental goods and problems transboundary, so are economic processes. Firms and economies are subject to international competition. In states with stricter environmental regulations, productions costs for firms are higher and the firms consequently suffer a competitive disadvantage in comparison to firms in states with laxer standards. The classical research question about regulatory competition is whether and under which conditions this situation leads to a regulatory "race to the bottom" (Oates/Schwab 1988; Scharpf 1996, 1997, 2000; Holzinger 2001, 2003). Within the EU financed project "Environmental Policy Convergence in Europe" (ENVIPOLCON) data on the development of 40 environmental policies over 30 years (1970 to 2000) in 24 countries have been collected. Among these 40 policies not a single "race to the bottom" could be observed. Moreover, the statistical analysis of these data has shown, that international trade can neither entirely explain the observed convergence of environmental standards nor the direction into which the standards converge, that is, to the top. An ad hoc explanation for this finding could be that regulatory competition does not arise, because its threat alone induces political actors to search for a political solution at the international level. Both economic actors and politicians have an incentive to avoid regulatory competition by introducing international harmonisation of environmental standards. The proposed paper will test this hypothesis using the data of the ENVIPOLCON project. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines recent efforts in developed countries to 'green the state' -- to adjust government structures and processes to promote environmentally sustainable development. Core problems that states must address in this regard include: strategic orientation and leadership, environmental policy integration, measurement and monitoring, policy instruments, public procurement and internal education. The paper will argue that some countries have made important steps in this regard, but that the uncertainties, cross-cutting character, and complexities, associated with environmental issues continue to pose serious governance problems for modern states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-globalist discourse posits a negative relationship between official development assistance (ODA) and the environment. More nuanced critiques of globalization, however, suggest that there are ways ODA may be used to support creative solutions to environmental problems. The key lies in the ability of funders and recipients to build institutions for cross-scale governance. Within and across each level-global, national, and local-individuals form relationships to secure the resources and authority they need for sustainable development. In this paper I consider some of the changes made by the World Bank, IMF, GEF, and USAID over the last decade that were intended to support environmental sustainability, participatory practices and capacity building for sustainable economic growth. I conclude that cross-scale governance is both necessary for effective participatory environmental governance, and that ODA can support it. But project-oriented funding is more likely to make a positive contribution than programmatic funding, and funders are most likely to be effective when they act as partners in incremental change rather than agents of broad, political and social transformation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores both the extent of ecological damage and human cost as well as the government's ability to implement sustainable development policies. China is currently facing an ecological and health crisis. Across the country, rapid industrialization along with breakneck development has turned China into one of the most polluted countries in the world with its air and water ranking as among the dirtiest in the world resulting in mounting health woes. Key concepts and issues discussed/examined in this chapter include: State Environmental Protection Administration, ecosystem, public health, sustainable development policy, acid rain, dam projects. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries did not start off as demandeurs of global environmental action. Although they are still rather skeptical about the global environmental enterprise, they have come a long way from being the vigorous contestants that they were three decades ago. This fascinating evolution has not only changed the views of developing countries but has also transformed the shape of the global environmental discourse, most significantly by turning what used to be global environmental politics into what is now the global politics of sustainable development. This paper charts this evolution by using the twin conceptual lenses of effectiveness and legitimacy and the heuristic markers of the three key global conferences on the global environment (Stockholm, 1972; Rio de Janeiro, 1992; Johannesburg, 2002). The paper argues that the pre-Stockholm era was exemplified by a politics of contestation by the South; the Stockholm-to-Rio period was a period of reluctant participation as a new global compact emerged around the notion of sustainable development; and the post-Rio years have seen the emergence of more meaningful, but still hesitant, engagement by the developing countries in the global environmental project but very much around the promise and potential of actualizing sustainable development. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the international community's evolving expectations for the private sector's involvement in implementing sustainable development goals, focusing on the positions taken by negotiators from the North and South to encourage or discourage this involvement. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was signed in 1992, refers to actors other than governmental Parties in only one case. The 1994 UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), by contrast, contains repeated instructions for non-State actors, commencing with a preambular reference to the "special role of non-governmental organizations and other major groups" in efforts to combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought. By 2002, the international community, through the World Summit on Sustainable Development, was actively encouraging the development of "partnerships" between private sector, government and non-governmental entities to implement sustainable development objectives. This paper reviews this evolution through a review of the negotiations regarding the private sector in the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. It then analyzes the negotiations to examine why these talks have unfolded as they have and to identify possible changes to move the talks forward. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to examine the connections between the authors? proposed framework for assessing IO environmental commitment and performance and the interactions/interplay/linkages literature. International organizations across the board have devoted considerable attention to addressing environmental issues in their work, at least rhetorically. Yet translating ?green? goals into on-the-ground performance that is quantifiable and effective has proven to be an elusive process, given widespread evidence that IO environmental performance is mixed at best. The literature on IO performance is underdeveloped, as most attention in the field has focused on why states delegate authority to IOs and whether they have autonomy. More recent attention to IO performance appears to be split between those who argue that institutional performance can be best determined by understanding the power politics and interests of an IO?s influential state members (or shareholders), and those who look more deeply inside the organization to understand how its bureaucratic behavior offers the key to understanding performance pathologies and accomplishments. The paper argues that both power politics and organizational dynamics must be examined in order to evaluate first the depth and scope of an organization?s commitment to address environmental issues and second, how that commitment is institutionalized in ways that shape its performance. In reality, IOs assess their own environmental performance independently of that of other IOs with which they work ? and apart from that of their major constituent member states and other stakeholders. We seek to assess the possible connections between the growing literature on the impacts/influence of institutional interplay and our proposed framework for comparative assessment of IO environmental performance. Guiding questions for the paper include the following: Can IO environmental performance be adequately assessed without attention to institutional interaction? Can insights in the literature on institutional linkages/interaction improve environmental performance assessment? Should we expect greater attention to institutional interaction by IO actors to improve their own environmental performance, or the assessment of it? ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate about international environmental governance - or international governance for sustainable development for that matter - has occupied much attention. Several new proposals have been floated, ranging from the creation of a new World Environmental Organization to a radical reform of the WTO. Yet UNEP continues to exist, with a broad mandate to develop international environmental governance. There is widespread agreement that UNEP does not meet the needs of the international society, but there is little agreement on what to do about it. UNEP itseld has recently created the Global Ministerial Environmental Forum and proposed the creation of an Intergovernmental Panel on Global Change. This paer will discuss various proposals to strengthen UNEP within the broader discussion of international environmental governance and discuss which alternatives have the greatest chance of being realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]