GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE
In the imagination of those who are sensitive to the realities of our era, the earth has become a space ship, and this, perhaps, is the most important single fact of our day.
—K. Boulding (1965)
SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES
Like other animals, humans consume natural resources. As commonly defined, natural resources are substances or processes that humans did not create but that can potentially benefit human welfare. Natural resources are living, as with forests and grasslands, or nonliving, as with rivers and streams. Natural resources derived from the biosphere are inherently renewable, as is consistent with the flows of energy and cycling of materials that characterize life. Natural resources from the geosphere, such as coal and minerals, are often not renewable.
Our human ancestors generally extracted a small enough proportion of their local natural resources that the resource base itself was not degraded or depleted. However, as the global climate stabilized for the Holocene interglacial period about 10,000 years ago, human hunting pressure began to reduce local herbivore populations. That impact on a local resource put us on the path to cultivating plants and domesticating animals. The concentration of humans on resource-rich landscapes, and a growth in technological capabilities, led to an increasing probability of natural resource degradation; i.e., the value of the ecological inheritance (Ellis, 2015) in those societies diminished over time.
As recounted in many excellent books (e.g., The Earth as Transformed by Human Action [B. L. Turner, Clark, Kates, and Richards, 1993]; Collapse: How Societies Fail or Succeed [Diamond, 2005]; and Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization [Montgomery, 2008]), recent human history is replete with cases in which technological advances in resource extraction ultimately degraded the local resource base. The flow of energy or materials that sustained the associated complex social structure was then reduced, and the social system collapsed. Alternatively, a society may not recognize natural resource limitations and thus overshoot the local carrying capacity. Historians continue to dispute the role of natural resource limitations in societal dynamics (e.g., Tainter, 1988), but clearly there are limits that are often poorly understood.
The alternative to resource degradation is sustainable management of natural resources. Sustainability means that resource capital is maintained even as a proportion of it is extracted and used for human purposes. Sustainability advocates emphasize both its economic and environmental aspects (Sustainable Development, 2017). The concept has applicability at scales ranging from the farm field, to the forest landscape, to the region, and to the planet. As we shall see, creating natural resource management schemes that achieve sustainability across all spatial scales is a tremendous challenge—certainly one to keep several generations of environmental and social scientists busy for decades or centuries to come.
The sustainability concept had its origin in the forest management literature relating to sustained yield of forest products. But it became especially important beginning in the 1990s in the context of economic development. In developing countries, environmental quality and natural capital were often being sacrificed to quickly generate financial and technosphere capital. To some degree, sustainability replaced the environmentalist’s rationale of protecting the environment purely for its own sake, with the rationale of protecting the environment for the sake of human use (O’Neil, 2009).
What does sustainability mean at the global scale? A key question concerns the proportion of natural resources that can be redirected to support human purposes without compromising the functioning of the biosphere (McNeill, 2000). How much of the land surface must be left in a semi-natural state? As noted earlier, biologist E. O. Wilson recently (2016) proposed 50 percent. How much of global terrestrial net primary production can be appropriated (Foley, Monfreda, Ramankutty, and Zaks, 2007)? We are at nearly 40 percent now. How much of global fish production can be consumed? How much biodiversity can be lost?
These questions are just beginning to be addressed, often by discovering that some limit has been transgressed. Synthesis efforts such as the Millennium Assessment (2005) do an excellent job of summarizing the current state of affairs. Overall, we are doing abysmally (see chapter 4). To give only a few examples:
Progress made thus far toward global sustainability is more in the realm of conceptual development than in the trajectories of the various indices of Earth system condition. We are beginning to understand the scope of the problem and conceive of global-scale solutions, but implementing them lags far behind. The gap between what Earth system scientists perceive as the threats to humans from global environmental change, and the effectiveness of the existing environmental governance institutions at all scales, is growing.
PLANETARY BOUNDARIES
The recently developed concept of “planetary boundaries” (Rockström et al., 2009; Steffen et al., 2015b) helps to holistically frame the constellation of global environmental change issues. The boundaries here refer to specific properties of the Earth system that are undergoing rapid alteration by the technosphere. For each property, e.g., the atmospheric CO2 concentration (linked to global mean temperature), a threshold value has been suggested beyond which the direction of change becomes practically irreversible, or a trajectory toward a new relatively stable state is locked in (table 8.1). The reference state is the Earth system in the 11,700-year-long Holocene epoch. This is the interval in Earth’s history during which advanced technological civilization evolved. Crossing of the planetary boundaries will push the Earth system out of that comfort zone.
Given the uncertainties about how the global environment is changing, and our capacity to forecast the impacts of future changes, these thresholds have been characterized for now as more of a social construct than a strict limit (Biermann, 2012). Nevertheless, the concept has gained traction as a means to think about and discuss a “safe operating space for humanity.”
PROGRESS TOWARD GLOBAL-SCALE ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE
Earth system governance has been defined as “the sum of the formal and informal rule systems and actor-networks at all levels of human society that are set up in order to influence the co-evolution of human and natural systems in a way that secures the sustainable development of human society” (Biermann, 2007, p. 329). In recent years, two models for global-scale environmental governance have emerged. The traditional model is a top-down approach in which nation-states negotiate international treaties and support regulatory bodies that manage resource use. In this model, international regulatory agreements are implemented mostly at the national level through executive authority or enforcement of legislated regulations. A second model is more informal and is situated primarily within the private sector; the governance arrangements involve mainly nongovernmental organizations and businesses. We will consider this second model first, and then survey what has been accomplished by the traditional top-down approach.
TABLE 8.1 Planetary Boundaries
EARTH SYSTEM PROCESS |
CONTROL VARIABLE(S) |
PLANETARY BOUNDARY |
VALUE IN 2009* |
|||
|
Climate change |
Atmospheric CO2 concentration |
350 ppm |
398 ppm |
|||
Energy imbalance at top-of atmosphere |
+1.0 W/m2 |
+1.5 W/m2 |
||||
Stratospheric ozone |
Stratospheric O3 concentration, Dobson unit (DU) |
< 5% reduction from preindustrial level of 290 DU |
Only transgressed over Antarctica in Austral spring (~200 DU) |
|||
Ocean acidification |
Carbonate ion concentration |
≥80% of the preindustrial aragonite saturation state of mean surface ocean |
~84% of the preindustrial aragonite saturation state |
|||
|
Biogeochemical flows (potassium [P] and nitrogen [N] cycles, in teragrams [Tg] per year) |
P Global: Potassium flow from freshwater systems into the ocean |
11 TgP/yr |
~22 TgP/yr |
|||
N Global: Industrial and intentional biological fixation of nitrogen |
62 TgN/yr |
150 TgN/yr |
||||
Land-system change |
Percentage of global land cover converted to cropland |
15% |
12% |
|||
Freshwater use |
Global: maximum amount of consumptive blue water use (km3/yr) |
4,000 km3/yr |
~2,600 km3/yr |
|||
Atmospheric aerosol loading |
Aerosol optical depth loading |
Not specified |
||||
Introduction of novel entities |
Chemicals |
Not specified |
||||
Change in biosphere integrity |
Extinction rate: Extinctions per million species years (E/MSY) |
<10 E/MSY |
100–1,000 E/MSY |
*Values may have changed significantly since 2009.
Source: Rockström et al. (2009)
Bottom-Up Environmental Governance
Many forces currently contribute to an erosion of national-level sovereignty (Young, 1997). Economic globalization, internal strife along lines of religion or ethnic origin, the spread of human rights, and the necessity to address global change issues are leading examples. These trends drive the development of a more “bottom-up” approach to environmental governance. In contrast to the international and governmental flavor of the top-down model, this approach relies on an emerging network of transnational private sector organizations (Pattberg, 2007). This new form of natural resource management relies in part on business actors who are motivated by profit, but who understand that voluntary commitments to certain standards or practices will ultimately lead to sustained profits. Often a nongovernmental organization (NGO) is the institutional actor that provides the coordinating links between multiple stakeholder groups associated with a particular resource.
That private governance arrangements can have large effects has been demonstrated strikingly in the forestry sector. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC, 2017) links loggers, saw mills, merchants, consumers, and regulators. Because top-down regulation has been so ineffective in stopping deforestation, the FSC is a good case study of why the private governance approach is especially needed (Pattberg, 2007).
The economic leverage point at the heart of the FSC is the process of certification. Timber suppliers (public or private) that meet basic standards of sustainability (box 8.1), as established by an independent scientific organization, receive a periodic certification to that effect. Wood products are then labeled as certified, consumers seek out the suppliers of those products, and certification is thus rewarded. This self-regulatory process sidesteps the need for national-level regulation and enforcement. There are of course multiple issues regarding details of the certification process—notably defining what constitutes sustainable forestry—but this model for forest conservation has great potential.
BOX 8.1
The Forest Stewardship Council Principles and Criteria for Sustainability
(FSC, 2017)
Certification of fisheries and aquaculture facilities is also advancing rapidly. Criteria here (box 8.2) relate to conserving fish populations and ecosystems. The Marine Fisheries Council aims for a global scope and now certifies about 10 percent of total global wild-caught fish. Best Aquaculture Practices serves as a key certification body of cultured finfish, crustaceans, and mussels. As with forestry practices, there are complex issues with what constitutes sustainability in these contexts. Certification NGOs generally have formal objection procedures to maximize consensus, compliance, and transparency (C. Christian et al., 2013).
International certification of agricultural products has not proceeded in parallel with certification of forestry and fisheries products. National-level certification of organic agricultural products is done by agencies and NGOs in the United States, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, and counties in the European Union. They act largely independently of each other. Defining “organic” food products is even more fraught with issues than sustainable wood and fisheries products, notably with respect to tolerance for genetically modified organisms.
BOX 8.2
Marine Fisheries Council Principles of Sustainable Fishery
1. Maintenance and reestablishment of healthy populations of targeted species
2. Maintenance of the integrity of ecosystems
3. Development and maintenance of effective fisheries management systems, taking into account all relevant biological, technological, economic, social, environmental, and commercial aspects
4. Compliance with relevant local and national laws and standards, as well as international understandings and agreements
(MFC, 2016)
The certification movement has also been successful in the construction industry, with the Green Building Council (USGBC, 2017) as the most active building certification NGO in the United States and internationally. USGBC has established the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) label as its stamp of approval. Criteria for certification relate to site characteristics, energy efficiency, source and type of building materials, and design features. Building certification generally contributes to the value of a building and is commonly required for publicly funded buildings.
The diversity and influence of environmental NGOs has increased tremendously in recent decades. This influence is facilitated by the Internet, which enhances information flow within and across national borders. NGOs lobby, educate, manage natural resources, and take direct action against polluters. Collectively, the array of environmental NGOs contributes to the emergence of a global civil society (Lipschutz, 1996).
Top-Down Environmental Governance
The nation-state is the fulcrum point for internationally coordinated efforts toward global environmental governance. States send representatives to international negotiating bodies to work out mutually agreeable strategies, and within their own borders implement supporting policies. States have traditionally been most concerned with defense, economic growth, and social welfare. However, environmental quality (both local and global) has emerged as a critical new responsibility (Eckersley, 2004).
WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION, INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND, AND WORLD BANK
In addition to the United Nations–mediated activities discussed later in this chapter, governmental development agencies, international trade agreements, and foreign aid programs exert a significant influence on global environmental quality (Clapp and Dauvergne, 2005). The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international institution (153 countries) that aims to develop trade agreements. It is a successor to an influential post–World War II global trade agreement (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT]). The WTO originated in the period of 1986–1994 and provided the institutional home for negotiations that led to regional agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The WTO has become an arbiter of environmental quality on various issues because it must decide when tariffs can be established based on environmental standards. One benefit of WTO emphasis on trade expansion is that exporting countries may adopt higher environmental standards to compete in markets where those standards are the norm. It is now common, when negotiating international trade agreements, to address issues related to impacts of trade on environmental quality.
The overall costs and benefits of WTO agreements for the environment remain controversial. Binding provisions to protect the environment are often included, but enforcement has been limited. WTO agreements can work against environmental protection in cases where corporations sue governments based on provisions that prevent regulation of investments based on environmental issues. The latest round of WTO negotiations (the Doha round) has been especially contentious. This pattern is related in part to push-back from emerging economy countries, notably China, India, and Brazil, about free trade provisions that would open the U.S. agricultural market (Hopewell, 2016). Anti-globalization sentiment in the most developed countries (see chapter 7) has also contributed. Failure to agree on a global trade rule set with significant support for beneficial environmental practices is a missed opportunity with respect to addressing multiple aspects of global environmental change.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank are additional international institutions with noteworthy influence of environmental quality. These organizations were organized in 1944 to provide advice and financing to their member countries. The initial focus was on rebuilding after World War II. However, by the 1990s, these organizations had begun to consider environmental issues and to promote sustainable growth. Structural adjustment lending (SAL) is a key means by which they influence environmental quality. These nation-level lending agreements are contingent upon policy reforms, which often have environmental implications (direct and indirect). The World Bank may fund development of a National Environmental Action Plan as part of negotiations toward approval of projects with significant environmental impacts. On the negative side, mandated reductions in social spending associated with SALs tend to increase poverty, thus pushing the poor to exploit available natural resources. Decreased government spending may also reduce the effectiveness of the local environmental regulatory agencies. SALs encourage development of export crops, which may be problematic environmentally (e.g., the relationship of soybean export to deforestation in Brazil).
In response to NGO pressure, the World Bank has moved to “green up” its portfolio of international projects, e.g., by providing less lending for megadams (World Bank, 2013b). The World Bank has also been a long-term supporter of population control projects (albeit with considerable controversial at times), thus fostering the global demographic transition.
UNITED NATIONS
The history of United Nations (UN)–mediated global environmental governance of bodies and agreements outside the IMF and World Bank framework is rather short, so it is worth going back to the beginning. This history could logically start with the League of Nations, which was born out of the debacle of World War I. However, the League of Nations apparently did not have an environmental component, and in any case died prematurely because of its failure to deal substantively with the geopolitical aftermath of the war. Next up was the UN. In its initial form after WWII, there was little of substance related to environmental issues. But over the years it has come to play a major role in international negotiations on the environment.
The UN-sponsored Stockholm Conference in 1972 marked the beginning of broad international recognition of the significance of global environmental change issues. The primary outcome of the conference was the nonbinding Stockholm Declaration. Fundamentally, it established the principle that each country was responsible for the human-induced environmental changes within its borders that affected the environment outside its borders. The conference also initiated the formation of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), thus creating a forum for ongoing discussions of global environmental change issues.
Twenty years later (1992), the UN-sponsored the Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. Popularly known as the “Earth Summit,” this was a massive conference involving 100 heads of state, representatives of 178 countries, and representatives of 1,000 NGOs. Some of the agreements reached in this meeting resulted in binding commitments, notably the Framework Convention on Climate Change (discussed below). It required countries to regularly produce estimates of greenhouse gas emissions. Other important outcomes were a Framework Convention on Biodiversity, a Convention on Desertification, and a Statement of Principles on Forests.
UNCED initiated massive participation by NGOs in the development of international environmental agreements. The NGOs included advocacy groups that worked primarily in the political arena, as well as educational groups, environmental activist groups like Greenpeace, and certification proponents like the Forest Stewardship Council.
The follow-up international meeting to UNCED was the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2002. It is widely considered a failure. Agendas for change had already been set in previous environmental megaconferences, and it was time for action plans. Unfortunately, the necessary political will could not be mustered (Seyfang, 2003). Likewise, the Rio 2012 conference held in Rio de Janeiro in 2012 generated a variety of nonbinding resolutions that have not had much impact. There is growing skepticism about the effectiveness of the UN consensus process.
The UN framework for global environmental governance has had the effect of promoting, in many countries, environmental quality regulatory bodies or environmental ministries (Aklin and Urpelainen, 2014) that support international negotiations about environmental issues (i.e., multilateral environmental agreements). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is perhaps the prototype. It was established in 1970 to protect the environmental and human health. EPA now works extensively on global environmental change issues, including stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change.
Domain-Specific International Agreements
Agreements Related to the Oceans
Oceans provided the impetus for one of the first international environmental agreements. In 1937, an agreement was signed in London that began the effort to regulate whale harvesting. A successor convention in 1946 established the International Whaling Commission (IWC). The governing protocol was a simple majority rule, and since commercial whaling was widely accepted and enforcement of commission regulations was weak, decline in whale populations continued. By 1992, a block of anti-whaling countries managed to collaborate and pass a moratorium on commercial whaling. Provisions included exemptions for purposes of scientific research and the option to gain an exemption by registering an objection. Thus, a small group of countries continued to hunt whales. The IWC is now at something of an impasse between the pro-whaling and anti-whaling blocks of nations. Nevertheless, whale hunting has declined dramatically since the 1960s—driven in part by direct action from environmental NGOs against whaling ships—and populations of many whale species are increasing.
Besides whaling, the issue of dumping at sea has stirred action. An international convention in 1972 prohibited dumping material that was potentially hazardous to marine life. (Dumping of anything else was acceptable.) The convention was updated in 1996 to prohibit dumping of any waste. Most recently, the UN has developed a Convention on the Law of the Sea that encompasses a wide variety of environmental issues. Enough countries signed the convention to bring it into force by 1994 for all parties to the treaty. The United States has signed onto the Law of the Sea Convention, but it has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate, mostly because mining interests are resisting regulation of deep sea mining. Other questionable features include a provision that if a nation does not harvest its entire allowable catch of fish, it must give rights to the surplus to other nations.
Agreements Related to the Atmosphere
Radionucleotides
The first international treaties regarding the atmosphere concerned the issue of radioactive contamination. As nuclear testing escalated in the 1950s, it was already known that detonation of nuclear bombs above ground produced radioactive substances in the atmosphere that were potentially hazardous to human health. A nuclear test explosion at Bikini Atoll in 1954 was two or three times as powerful as scientists had predicted, and the radioactive products of the explosion reached a nearby inhabited atoll, causing radiation sickness in the human residents.
By the late 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union were exploding nuclear weapons in space to test their potential effectiveness as anti-satellite weapons. Incredibly, both nations set off nuclear weapons in the atmosphere as a form of saber rattling during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963. That incident must have generated a keen sense in the international community that something more had to be done to step back from the nuclear brink. One step in that direction was the Test Ban Treaty in 1963, ostensibly driven by the increasing concentration of radioactive substances in the atmosphere. This agreement prohibited nuclear tests in the atmosphere, space, and underwater; the goal being “an end to the contamination of man’s environment by radioactive substances.” In 1996, five of the eight nations with nuclear weapons capability signed a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India, Pakistan, and North Korea did not sign but have limited themselves to underground explosions, again often as a form of saber rattling.
Sulfur and Nitrogen Emissions
Sulfate and nitrate emissions from fossil fuel combustion are another form of air pollution that has inspired international treaties (beginning in the 1970s). These compounds eventually come out of the atmosphere by way of precipitation and contribute to soil and water acidification (as outlined in chapter 4). In the early 1970s, it became evident that emissions from England that were blown east by the prevailing winds were acidifying lakes and streams in Scandinavia. Likewise, emissions from industrial facilities in the U.S. Midwest were driving lake acidification in Canada. Negotiations on these issues resulted in the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, signed in 1979. The original convention did not quantify how much air pollution a given country could emit, but follow-up agreements have become increasingly specific. The transboundary emissions were mostly associated with power plants, and technologies for reducing emissions included scrubbers that stripped out the sulfur.
On a personal note, I did a postdoctoral fellowship at an EPA laboratory in the mid-1980s studying the effects of acidic fog on leaching of nutrients from conifer foliage. Near the end of my study, the United States passed legislation to limit emissions of sulfur from U.S. power plants and subsequently, these emissions began to decrease. As soon as the legislation was passed, the EPA largely lost interest in acid rain, and we researchers joked about the problem being “solved.” In reality, the level of sulfur deposition has dropped in the United States, but levels of nitrate deposition have remained high in many areas. Acidic deposition in China and India is clearly degrading environmental quality. Throughout the biosphere, serious questions remain about the long-term impacts of air pollution on acidification of surface waters and soil.
Stratospheric Ozone Depletion
The role of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in reducing ozone levels in the stratosphere is another critical atmospheric pollution problem (see chapter 4) that has generated an international treaty. CFCs were first synthesized in the 1930s for use as refrigerants and propellants. The science community was alerted to a possible problem when James Lovelock (of Gaia fame) pointed out in 1972 that CFCs were accumulating in the atmosphere. He was casting around for a scientific question that could be addressed by a new instrument he had designed called an electron capture device. It was capable of measuring concentrations of trace gases such as CFCs at unprecedentedly low levels. He used it on a scientific expedition to Antarctica in 1972 to begin monitoring CFC concentrations. After Lovelock’s discovery, atmospheric chemists James Molina and Sherry Rowland hypothesized that accumulating CFCs might interfere with ozone chemistry in the atmosphere. By 1985 measurements of ozone in the stratosphere over Antarctica had confirmed declines during the winter. The mechanisms related to an increase in ice crystals during the winter that helped catalyze ozone-consuming reactions. Less stratospheric ozone meant more solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation penetrated the atmosphere. UNEP organized a scientific working ground on the issue, and in 1985 an international accord was signed. It did not contain specific constraints on CFC production, but included a commitment to “protect humans from harm associated with human-induced changes in the ozone layer.” A scientific consensus rapidly built up about the issue, and the chemical industry developed alternative compounds that could substitute for CFCs. The Montreal Protocol in 1987 introduced firm reductions in CFC production.
I was still working at an EPA laboratory about this time (late 1980s) and became involved in assessing possible ecosystem-level effects of increasing UV radiation. Scientists were performing experiments such as growing tree seedlings under lamps with special radiation regimes mimicking the case of severe stratospheric ozone depletion. From these studies, it was evident that certain plant pigments help protect the plants from UV radiation, and that concentrations of the pigments rose as UV exposure rose. Plants growing at high elevations, with a thinner atmosphere and hence relatively high levels of UV radiation, tended to have higher concentrations of the protecting pigments. In some studies, plant productivity declined under exposure to elevated levels of UV radiation (specifically in the UV-B wavelengths). While these studies were progressing, the international policy community had rapidly come together. The Montreal Protocol, which went into force in 1989, largely stopped further production of the specific CFCs that were causing the ozone depletion. As far as further research, it was again a case of “problem solved.” The EPA got out of UV effects research. Only recently are we beginning to see recovery of stratospheric ozone (P. J. Nair et al., 2015) as concentrations of chlorofluorocarbons drop (see figure 4.5)
The Montreal Protocol is often highlighted as a model for addressing other global environmental change issues, notably climate change. Especially regarding reliance on interdisciplinary science to assess the issue, and the governance approach to addressing the stratospheric ozone depletion issues, it did indeed set useful precedents. However, the fact that relatively few CFC producers were involved, and that CFC substitutes were rapidly developed, helped constrain the problem. Responding to climate change presents a qualitatively different case because of the pervasive use of fossil fuels.
Interestingly, the Montreal Protocol is helping with the climate change issue because it has become the vehicle for efforts to reduce emissions and concentrations of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). These compounds were developed to replace CFCs when stratospheric ozone depletion became an issue. Unfortunately, they are also strong greenhouse gases. Another generation of alternative compounds has been developed, and most countries are on board to add provisions to the Montreal Protocol that formally ban HCFC emissions.
Agreements Related to the Land
Issues related to the land tend to be more localized than those related to the oceans or atmosphere. Consequently, it has taken somewhat longer for them to be addressed at the international level. The land issues that have now come to the forefront are deforestation, desertification, and loss of biodiversity. All three were addressed with formal conventions or declarations at UNCED.
The UNCED Convention on Biodiversity (UCB) established biodiversity as a core environmental issue. Unfortunately, the UCB lacked mechanisms for enforcement of its guiding principles and has therefore had limited effectiveness. It raised many thorny issues within the biodiversity sphere—notably the intellectual property rights related to biological and genetic resources, and the role of indigenous people in maintaining biodiversity. Nonetheless, the UCB has at least provided a framework for ongoing conservation efforts. The UCB declared a formal goal of reducing the global loss of biodiversity by 2010 (not achieved). An additional formal goal was to protect at least 10 percent of land within each biome or ecoregion by 2010, which likewise has not been achieved (Jenkins and Joppa, 2009).
The UNCED Declaration of Principles on Forests is a rather weak incentive to forest conservation relative to the massive ongoing assault on tropical forests. Follow-up efforts, such as the Tropical Forestry Action Plan and the United Nations Forum on Forests, have also had little practical effect. The worst deforestation occurs in tropical countries, where development has a much higher priority than conservation.
One hopeful sign is the linkage of deforestation with the climate change issue. Current proposals call for payment (carbon credits) to countries with areas of intact tropical forest to keep them from being deforested (the acronym is REDD: Reduction in Deforestation and Forest Degradation). REDD+ is an elaboration of REDD allowing activities for enhancement of forest carbon stocks as well as prevention of carbon losses by deforestation.
The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was also fundamentally a statement of principles rather than a set of enforceable regulations. It was primarily designed to bring the issue onto the global stage. As with deforestation, problems resulting from development are at the forefront of proposals to reduce desertification. UNCCD has been a force for development of national-level action plans and for promotion of research that identifies the underlying causes of desertification. These factors include notably complex issues such as insecure land tenure, failed local institutions, and low market prices.
To serve as a financial mechanism linking international agreements on the environment with on-the-ground projects, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) was created in 1994 under the auspices of UNEP, the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme. Donor countries have contributed billions of dollars to support projects in developing countries related to the UCB, UNCCD, and other conventions. GEF is active in transboundary natural resource management (e.g., the Mekong River Basin) and global-scale conservation efforts such as the World Database of Protected Areas developed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
ADDRESSING GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
By the late 1980s, growing awareness of rising concentrations of CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, tropospheric ozone, and CFCs had raised the possibility that associated global climate warming might profoundly impact human welfare. The international response was the founding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This body was established in 1988 under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization and UNEP. The IPCC aimed to produce a consensus among scientists across an array of disciplines about the issue of climate change.
The first of a series of IPCC assessment reports was released in 1990 and the most recent in 2014. The 1990 document concluded that climate change, driven by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, was indeed a threat. In a truly impressive testament to the emerging global awareness of environmental issues, the UN General Assembly initiated international negotiations on the climate change issue based on the IPCC report. By 1992, the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) was opened for signatures.
One of the most important provisions of the UNFCCC was that each country develops an annual inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions. These emission values established the basis for the follow-up Kyoto Protocol, which specified country-level targets for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Enough countries (albeit not including the United States, which was the largest single greenhouse gas–emitting country at the time) eventually ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and it went into force in 2005. The first target dates for evaluating the commitments to emissions reductions were in 2012. By that time, large emitters (like Canada) that had signed on but were not achieving their emissions reduction goals withdrew to avoid financial sanctions. The Kyoto Protocol succeeded as a prototype attempt at an international agreement but was a failure in terms of actually reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.
There were initially high hopes for a successor treaty to be formulated at the climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009. However, insufficient political will was available to get much done. After the disappointment at Copenhagen, some policy analysts thought it might never be possible to reach agreement among all nations about how to address global climate change. An alternative might be an agreement among the ten or so largest emitters of greenhouse gases, notably China (which has surpassed the United States in greenhouse gas emissions), India (also rapidly developing, and with an ample supply of coal), and the United States. Those three countries contribute a substantial proportion (nearly 50 percent) of the total global emissions (Boden, Marland, and Andres, 2015) and might be more likely to act in a coordinated fashion (Levi, 2009). Economist William Nordhaus has proposed that a “climate club” of a few high-emitting countries could agree to limit emissions and impose small trade penalties to induce other countries to participate (Nordhaus, 2015).
One thing on which the Copenhagen meeting participants did agree was the desirability of reducing deforestation (a significant source of CO2). The REDD+ concept was supported by commitments of the developed countries to help pay for relevant programs. Norway committed funds equivalent to half a billion U.S. dollars per year to the program. The straightforward objective of reducing emissions through REDD+ is complicated by issues such as rights of indigenous people, corruption in the granting of logging concessions, “leakage” in the sense of conservation in one area contributing to exploitation in another, and development of systems for monitoring carbon stocks and flux.
The most recent phase of the international negotiations on CO2 emissions, the Paris Agreement, was brought to fruition in December 2015. Several key differences from previous negotiated agreements were manifest.
1. All 195 countries participating in the negotiations approved the final working of the agreement.
2. A target of less than a 2.0°C increase (by 2100) in global mean temperature above the preindustrial level was specified.
3. Each county specified its own “nationally determined contributions” to emissions reductions rather than having its commitments determined by negotiation. This was a change away from the top-down model of previous attempts. Correspondingly, there was no agreed upon enforcement mechanism, simply a plan to assess overall progress toward emissions reductions every 5 years.
4. The importance of forests as carbon sources and sinks was given special emphasis.
5. The subject of adaptation was raised, a recognition that significant climate changes will occur no matter what the level of mitigation effort.
The primary criticisms of the Paris Agreement center on its nonbinding nature, its modest target of 1.5°C–2.0°C (Schleussner et al., 2016), and the gap between the sum of the national-level commitments, and what would realistically be required to meet the less than 2°C target. Note that for the first half of 2016, global mean temperature was 1.9°C above the twentieth century average value (NOAA, 2017a).
Despite the nonbinding nature of the Paris Agreement, in early 2017 the president of the United States chose to withdraw U.S. participation. This symbolic gesture from the nation with the largest contribution to cumulative fossil fuel emissions inspired near-universal opprobrium. Ironically, for a president concerned with trade imbalance, U.S. withdrawal could precipitate a carbon tax on U.S. imports in other nations (Kemp, 2017).
Besides the international negotiations, efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are proceeding in many cases at the national level and lower, notably in legislation that supports development of renewable energy sources and research on carbon capture (from coal-burning power plants). There has been less support for carbon taxes, although significantly Australia passed one (November 2011, later canceled). California passed a remarkably progressive climate change bill in 2006 that implements a “cap-and-trade” system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (and indeed total emissions are going down). Bottom-up pressure from NGOs such as 350.org has lent impetus to reform efforts.
We noted in chapter 4 that the atmospheric concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide were increasing along with CO2. The possibility of methane emissions, associated with the transition away from coal toward natural gas, is particularly worrisome. The global policy community has not made much progress on an international agreement to limit methane emissions, and national-level efforts in the United States to upgrade standards on methane leakage from natural gas facilities have been weakened. The possibilities for meeting the goal of keeping the global mean temperature increase below 1.5°C–2.0°C will be significantly improved if the concentrations of methane are controlled along with CO2 (Shindell et al., 2012)
BOX 8.3
Post-Normal Science
The concept of “wicked problems” arose in the 1970s (Rittel and Webber, 1973), and the related concept of “post-normal science” in the 1990s (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1994). Wicked problems commonly have the following features (Ney and Verweij, 2015, p. 1679):
(1) each wicked problem is, in important respects, unique; (2) the range of possible causes is large and uncertain; (3) the set of solutions is equally vast and open-ended; (4) many people and organizations, from various social and natural domains, are involved; (5) each solution requires investing lots of time, energy and money resulting in large-scale changes in behavior, ecosystems, infrastructure and technology; (6) implementing any solution likely creates novel problems; and (7) as wicked problems are multi-faceted and enduring, it is inappropriate to speak of correct solutions in any absolute sense—it is preferable to use relative terms, such as satisfactory, more helpful or more widely acceptable.
Traditional pure and applied sciences have difficulty addressing wicked problems in part because values are often involved in their solution, something inconsistent with the putative objective nature of science. The “extended peer review community” for wicked problems includes scientists from very different disciplines, as well as nonscientist with direct experience of the problem (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1994). Thus, achieving consensus in the usual scientific way becomes more difficult. The emerging social contract of science and society calls for scientific help in addressing wicked problems (Lubchenco, 1998); however, there has been a corresponding increase in awareness of the limits of scientific prediction and control. Scientists are participants, but no longer privileged authorities, in the intensive dialogues needed to navigate toward solutions to wicked environmental change problems.
The climate change issue raises many fundamental questions about how humanity might organize itself to address global environmental change problems (Glover, 2006). There are obvious equity concerns given that developed countries have contributed much more to the current increase in greenhouse gases than developing countries, whereas the developing countries will need substantial new energy sources to improve their economies and standard of living, and have less capacity to adapt. The quasi-advisory role of science in societal deliberations about climate change is increasingly different (“post-normal,” box 8.3) than its traditional role of making hypotheses and testing them with observations (“positivist science”). Nation-states have decision-making power regarding climate change mitigation (e.g., the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement), but do they represent all interests? This bewildering array of new perspectives indicates the still open and contested nature of the search for solutions to global environmental change problems. Even the concept of the global “we,” who have ushered in the Anthropocene and now must begin managing the Earth system, is contested (Malm and Hornborg, 2014).
REQUIREMENTS FOR EFFECTIVE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE
Considering the whole array of global environmental change issues, a few generalized requirements for progress in global environmental governance have been recognized.
1. The capacity to monitor the resource (see chapter 9). Status and trends of the resource provide a basis for negotiating levels of intervention and restrictions. This capacity at the global scale is technically challenging and not well coordinated. It requires national and international research institutions focused on monitoring.
2. The capacity to forecast the resource condition based on simulation modeling (see chapter 6). The projection of current trends into future states with and without policy changes supports negotiations on global environmental change issues.
3. Quantitative targets for indices of environmental quality (e.g., planetary boundaries). A target value helps bring into focus what kinds of changes are needed to avoid dangerous, virtually irreversible, changes.
4. Enforcement of negotiated agreements. Often global environmental change agreements are aspirational rather than enforceable. National sovereignty generally trumps global environmental quality. Economic sanctions are currently used among nations in attempts to force compliance with global standards on issues such as human rights and security. Ultimately, this approach might prove successful with respect to compliance on global environmental change issues.
5. A forum for stakeholder engagement. UNEP now provides a first-order forum for global environmental change issues. However, the complexity of the issues means that multiple levels of governance (global, national, state, etc.) must be engaged and multiple organizational objectives must be coordinated (Galaz, Biermann, Folke, Nilsson, and Olsson, 2012).
6. An informed population that understand the issues and has access to enough information and assessments to help provide the political will to make appropriate policy changes and participate in NGOs that advocate for reform (Murtugudde, 2010).
The massive scale of global environmental change issues and the slow progress toward addressing them has inspired the political science community to debate the optimal form of global environmental governance institutions. Some have pushed for an upgrading of UNEP to the level of a WTO-like organization within the UN framework, or to creation of a new coordinating institution. Biermann (2012, 2014) has long advocated for a World Environmental Organization (WEO). This intergovernmental institution would be designed along the lines of the WTO, which has become one of the major institutions of global economic governance. The benefits of an overarching global environmental change institution include possible synergies in linking governance across the range of planetary boundaries (Nilsson and Persson, 2012). Others have questioned the possible effectiveness of a WEO, especially considering the tight grip on sovereignty demanded by most nations (Biermann, 2014).
ESSENTIAL POINTS
Traditional top-down environmental governance organizations (largely based on the United Nations) have succeeded in formulating a wide array of multilateral environmental agreements aimed at sustainable management of global natural resources. However, implementation of these agreements has been patchy, often running up against intractable issues of equity. NGOs such as the Global Environmental Fund help coordinate bottom-up actions to support the goals of the international agreements.
Bottom-up efforts at global environmental governance—notably NGOs that certify forestry, agriculture, and fisheries operations—are creating an institutional infrastructure that links producers, consumers, and regulators. The higher the proportion of global natural resources that are certified, the better the chances for reversing negative trends in environmental quality. Environmental NGOs also lobby, educate, manage natural resources, and take direct action against polluters.
Although the 2015 Paris Agreement established a global consensus that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced, the summed national-level commitments are likely not sufficient to accomplish the stated goal of keeping mean temperature increase below 1.5°C–2.0°C. A change of 2°C or greater will have massive impacts on the global biogeochemical cycles, the biosphere, and human welfare.
IMPLICATIONS
Although WTO-sponsored negotiations have stalled in recent years, issues relating to trade and the environment are becoming more closely linked. Global, regional, and bilateral trade agreements are an opportunity to standardize progressive environmental practices.
A new global environmental governance institution (i.e., a WEO) could strengthen the relevant scientific knowledge base and facilitate international cooperation on global environmental change issues. Conservation, mitigation, and adaptation could all fall under its purview.
It will be important, in follow-up meetings to the Paris Agreement on climate change, to make additional commitments to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions.
FURTHER READING
Biermann, F. (2014). Earth system governance: World politics in the Anthropocene. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Young, O. R. (Ed.). (1997). Global governance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.