Global governance: drawing insights from the environmental experience

Much of our experience with innovative approaches to governance at the international level involves natural resources and the environment. Whereas the Cold War bred an intense concern with the preservation of existing institutions, the emerging environmental agenda has prompted an awareness of the need for new arrangements to achieve sustainable human/environment relations. Especially notable is the growth of specific regimes to deal with matters such as endangered plants and animals, migratory species, airborne pollutants, marine pollution, hazardous wastes, ozone depletion, and climate change. Non-state actors have made particularly striking advances in the creation and maintenance of these environmental regimes.

The contributors to this volume draw upon the experiences of environmental regimes to examine the problems of international governance in the absence of a world government. In the process, they address four central questions: Has regime analysis produced a distinctive conception of governance that can be applied to the solution of collective-action problems at the international level? Can we identify the conditions necessary for international 'governance without government' to succeed? Does the emergence of regimes in specific issue areas have broader consequences for the future of international society? Can we generalise from experience with environmental issues to a broader range of international governance problems?

(From the publisher)