Global Environmental Governance And The Accountability Trap

An examination of whether accountability mechanisms in global environmental governance that focus on monitoring and enforcement necessarily lead to better governance and better environmental outcomes. The rapid development of global environmental governance has been accompanied by questions of accountability. Efforts to address what has been called “a culture of unaccountability” include greater transparency, public justification for governance decisions, and the establishment of monitoring and enforcement procedures. And yet, as this volume shows, these can lead to an “accountability trap”—a focus on accountability measures rather than improved environmental outcomes. Through analyses and case studies, the contributors consider how accountability is being used within global environmental governance and if the proliferation of accountability tools enables governance to better address global environmental deterioration. Examining public, private, voluntary, and hybrid types of global environmental governance, the volume shows that the different governance goals of the various actors shape the accompanying accountability processes. These goals—from serving constituents to reaping economic benefits—determine to whom and for what the actors must account. After laying out a theoretical framework for its analyses, the book addresses governance in the key areas of climate change, biodiversity, fisheries, and trade and global value chains. The contributors find that normative biases shape accountability processes, and they explore the potential of feedback mechanisms between institutions and accountability rules for enabling better governance and better environmental outcomes. Contributors Graeme Auld, Harro van Asselt, Cristina Balboa, Lieke Brouwer, Lorraine Elliott, Lars H. Gulbrandsen, Aarti Gupta, Teresa Kramarz, Susan Park, Philipp Pattberg, William H. Schaedla, Hamish van der Ven, Oscar Widerberg

An examination of the conflict between values and bureaucracy in World Bank biodiversity partnerships that sheds light on this model of global environmental governance. Multi-stakeholder partnerships have become an increasingly common form of global governance. Partnerships, usually between international organizations (IOs) or state agencies and such private actors as NGOs, businesses, and academic institutions, have even been promoted as the gold standard of good governance--participatory, innovative, and well-funded. And yet these partnerships often fail to live up to the values that motivated their establishment. In this book, Teresa Kramarz examines this gap between promise and performance by analyzing partnerships in biodiversity conservation initiatives launched by the World Bank.

An examination of whether accountability mechanisms in global environmental governance that focus on monitoring and enforcement necessarily lead to better governance and better environmental outcomes. The rapid development of global environmental governance has been accompanied by questions of accountability. Efforts to address what has been called “a culture of unaccountability” include greater transparency, public justification for governance decisions, and the establishment of monitoring and enforcement procedures. And yet, as this volume shows, these can lead to an “accountability trap”—a focus on accountability measures rather than improved environmental outcomes. Through analyses and case studies, the contributors consider how accountability is being used within global environmental governance and if the proliferation of accountability tools enables governance to better address global environmental deterioration. Examining public, private, voluntary, and hybrid types of global environmental governance, the volume shows that the different governance goals of the various actors shape the accompanying accountability processes. These goals—from serving constituents to reaping economic benefits—determine to whom and for what the actors must account. After laying out a theoretical framework for its analyses, the book addresses governance in the key areas of climate change, biodiversity, fisheries, and trade and global value chains. The contributors find that normative biases shape accountability processes, and they explore the potential of feedback mechanisms between institutions and accountability rules for enabling better governance and better environmental outcomes. Contributors Graeme Auld, Harro van Asselt, Cristina Balboa, Lieke Brouwer, Lorraine Elliott, Lars H. Gulbrandsen, Aarti Gupta, Teresa Kramarz, Susan Park, Philipp Pattberg, William H. Schaedla, Hamish van der Ven, Oscar Widerberg

Transparency is increasingly seen as part of the solution to a complex array of economic, political, and ethical problems in an interconnected world. It is often assumed to result in more accountable and effective governance. The 'transparency turn' in global environmental governance in particular is evident in a wide range of international agreements, voluntary disclosure initiatives, and public-private partnerships. This is the first book to scrutinise this transparency turn critically, and to investigate whether it is a broadly transformative force or plays a more limited, instrumental role.

This unique dictionary and introduction to Global Environmental Governance (GEG), written and compiled by two veterans of the international stage, provides a compilation of over 5500 terms, organizations and acronyms, drawn from hundreds of official sources. An introductory essay frames the major issues in GEG and outlines the pitfalls of talking past one another when discussing the most critical of issues facing the planet. It challenges those who are concerned with the management of our planet and its inhabitants to understand and accept a vocabulary common to the often-opposing objectives sought in the many GEG instruments. The result is a practical tool that should find a central place on the desk of anyone involved in environmental management, development or sustainability issues anywhere in the world, including the United Nations, government policy makers, NGOs and other stakeholder groups, the business community, and students and professionals. This fully revised and updated edition contains over 500 new entries and acronyms on global environmental governance as well a new introductory section on global water governance, one of the most pressing environmental issues in our era of climate change, growing populations and food shortages. Praise for the first edition:

Aligning global governance to the challenges of sustainability is one of the most urgent environmental issues to be addressed. This book is a timely and up-to-date compilation of the main pieces of the global environmental governance puzzle. The book is comprised of 101 entries, each defining a central concept in global environmental governance, presenting its historical evolution, introducing related debates and including key bibliographical references and further reading. The entries combine analytical rigour with empirical description. The book: offers cutting edge analysis of the state of global environmental governance, raises an up-to-date debate on global governance for sustainable development, gives an in-depth exploration of current international architecture of global environmental governance, examines the interaction between environmental politics and other fields of governance such as trade, development and security, elaborates a critical review of the recent literature in global environmental governance. This unique work synthesizes writing from an internationally diverse range of well-known experts in the field of global environmental governance. Innovative thinking and high-profile expertise come together to create a volume that is accessible to students, scholars and practitioners alike.

Yet many of its fundamental elements remain unclear in both theory and practice.

Global Environmental Governance examines ten major environmental threats- climate disruption, biodiversity loss, acid rain, ozone depletion, deforestation, desertification, freshwater degradation and shortages, decline of marine fisheries, toxic pollutants, and excess nitrogen-and explores how they can be addressed through treaties, governance regimes, and new forms of international cooperation. It also critically examines the serious shortcomings of current efforts and the underlying reasons for the persistence of disturbing trends. This book presents key concepts in international law and regime formation in simple, accessible language, and describes the current institutional landscape, les-sons learned, and new directions need-ed in international governance.