Problems and prospects of a global environmental governance

PAPER Problems and prospects of a global environmental governance Introduction. The environmental issue and the action of the States The environmental issue is nowadays one of the most important challenges that the international community is called to face. Specifically, it consists of a set of problems concerning the degradation of the environment which, just to name a few, include global warming, water, land, air pollution, biodiversity loss, etc. Environmental protection is a requirement of primary importance because it meets the objective of sustainability of human life on planet Earth. Human activities, in fact, have become so numerous and so predominant as to cause harmful effects on the ecosystem. The industry, the exploitation of energy, mineral and food resources, the land exploitation and the lifestyle of individuals in urban areas are aspects of modernity that have become unconsciously unsustainable for the environment and, if continued to be conducted in this indiscriminate measure, they will inevitably jeopardize the existence of the humankind on Earth. However, environmental sustainability is not an easy goal to achieve because of some unique characteristics that concerns the environmental problems to be addressed. Basically, environmental problems are not circumscribed in space and are not immediately evident over time. Regarding the first aspect, it is clear that the impact of human activities is not limited to the borders of the single states where these activities are implemented, but have large-scale consequences, so as to involve the entire planet. As a result, the pollution produced in one part of the world can produce effects even thousands of kilometers away. An emblematic example is characterized by acid rain, atmospheric phenomenon that can occur at long distance from the place where the chemical substances responsible are issued: for example, Scandinavia is a victim of acid rain produced in Britain and Canada of that produced in the United United (Bormann and Likens, 1974). On the second point, the harmful effects of human activities on the environment are manifested deferred over time. The worrying magnitude of this aspect is effectively expressed by the so-called Giddens Paradox (2015), formulated with regard to the issue of global warming. According to this paradox, since the damage caused by global warming are not immediate, visible and tangible, one does not take useful behaviors to prevent them, although he may know or intuit the danger. Unfortunately, once the environmental damages appear more evident, it may be too late to take action and bring the situation back to its natural order. On the basis of these two aforementioned inherent characteristics of the environmental problems, in order to solve environmental States have adopted cooperative solutions. Cooperative solutions, however, are difficult to achieve because single states are led to the pursuit of specific interests and to adopt selfish behaviors, well explained through the logic of human collective action (Olson, 1971). By this term it is defined the dynamics that lead to undesirable social consequences, resulting from human behaviors which from the individual point of view seem perfectly rational. Applied to the environmental sphere, the logic of human collective action brings about the tragedy of the commons (Hardin, 1968). The tragedy of the commons occurs for goods not excludable but rival, ie for the goods for which one cannot exclude certain subjects from consumption (non-excludable), but that consumption by a subject reduces the availability of that good to the others (rivalry). In the absence of regulation, some people will abuse in the use of the good to the detriment of the others until the entire stock will run out to the detriment of all the parties. An immediate example is that of fishing in international waters, but also clean air and forests are goods of this kind. The consequences of human collective action highlight the reason why it is difficult to achieve an effective management of environmental resources system. Member States do not behave as rational actors, and put before the immediate benefit to sustainability for the future. In order to achieve environmental sustainability it is necessary, therefore, to put in place effective global environmental policies. The evolution of global environmental policy. A brief history When it comes to environmental policy, it is addressed an action of governments of recent onset. The awareness that human activities have an impact on the nature capable of upsetting the ecological balance was reached only after the Second World War thanks to the efforts of scholars and scientists (Carson, 1962) and a clear action of governments in this area started following the rise of the environmental movement and the establishment of the first green organizations in the 60s (Ellen van Bueren, 2014). The first environmental policies were singularly taken by states to deal with environmental situations limited and restricted to national borders, but when big environmental issues such as climate change and the ozone hole have emerged, States realized that international interventions were necessary. Already in 1968, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution which established to convene a world conference on the human environment. The conference was held four years later in Stockholm, in 1972. In this way, the United Nations has recognized that environmental problems can only be solved through cooperation between States. Since Stockholm, two principles have marked global policies on the environment: the principle of intergenerational solidarity that defines the concept of sustainable development at the base of the "Brundtland report" of 1987, and the precautionary principle affirmed in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 at the Conference on environment and Development of the United Nations, which urged states to prevent potentially harmful activities for the environment, in the absence of solid evidence that does not prove the absence of dangers of these activities (Abouchar, Cameron 1991). The Rio Summit also produced important results on one of the key environmental issues: that of climate change. It has in fact brought to the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change UNFCCC hence the acronym). This Convention provides for the introduction of limits on greenhouse gas emissions, the main cause of global warming. A few years later, in 1997, in Kyoto was held the third Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC. This meeting has led to the drafting of a protocol on the limitation of emissions which so far is the highest point in development of a comprehensive environmental policy, while still presenting some lacks. The Kyoto Protocol, in fact, if one side sets binding commitments for the reduction of emissions with a moderate system of sanctions, it is still a voluntary agreement, which commits only the participating countries. The United States, for example, have not ratified the treaty but are the country with the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions. Countries like China and India, however, despite having signed the Protocol were not supposed to reduce emissions since not considered responsible, together with other developing countries, of the climate change hitherto encountered. The Paris Agreement, drawn up during the twenty-first Conference of the Parties in 2015 and designed to replace the Kyoto Protocol with new targets and with equal commitments by all Contracting States, still sees United States out from participation. For this reason it is necessary to formulate new governance solutions for achieving environmental sustainability. The events of the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement represent how, despite the evidence of human impact on the ecosystem and despite the global nature of environmental issues, it is difficult to achieve shared decisions at the international level because of the national selfishness and the initial economic and social costs that these decisions entail. As long as States are loyal to the concept of national sovereignty, it will be difficult to develop fair and shared rules to protect the environment at the international level. States have shown in the past to have developed a certain sensitivity and attention to environmental issues, but when they were called to take serious and effective measures to fight global problems they have failed. So far a real global environmental governance that could cope with the complexity of environmental challenges was not realized because the debate was mainly focused on the governments’ domain, ignoring the role and the capabilities of other actors, potentially more sensitive to the cause since most directly affected by the negative effects of environmental degradation. In the next paragraph the features of the current global environmental governance system will be outlined with a special regard to the critical issues it presents. Features of the current global environmental governance Before examining the environmental governance system is first necessary to define what is meant by governance. Starting with a framework concerning the national state boundaries, the term governance, borrowed from the language of economics, defines the ability of a government to establish and enforce laws (Fukuyama, 2013). According to a different approach, however, governance aims to overcome the centrality of the power of governments, proposing models in which the distinction between public and private becomes less clear (Stoker, 1998). Widening the field and looking to the area of action of the states in the international community, global governance is therefore defined as a type of rule system that have international repercussions (Rosenau and Czempiel, 1992). Governance has emerged as a concept in political science to respond to the awareness that governments are no longer able by themselves to manage the major social issues: their action is in fact shared by market players and civil society (Lange et al. 2013). Global governance is an idea which aims to give an overall value to existing international regimes, complex rules and procedures relating to specific sectors (Krasner, 1982), standardizing and tying them together, with the ultimate aim of overcoming the anarchy of the international system. At present, as far as the environment is concerned, we can talk indeed only of international regimes, and not of a real governance. The global environmental governance approach, although inherent in a specific sector, embraces many other fields, designing an overarching regulatory intervention. With global environmental governance, therefore, it is indicated a set of entities, policies, rules, procedures and standards that define the overall process of environmental protection (Najam et al. 2007). Specifically, components of the systems are: international environmental treaties and their secretariats; international organizations; the UNEP (the environmental program of the United Nations); other UN agencies and international institutions that, although not directly, deal with the issue of the environment (IFAD, FAO, World Bank, WTO, etc.); civil society actors such as NGOs and market players such as multinational corporations. As you can see, the global environmental governance is a multi-level system, that is composed from actors on different levels depending on their territorial jurisdiction and sectoral competence. Global environmental governance, although it has reached a high complexity and has achieved important results over time, still fails to respond adequately to the current environmental challenges. Indeed, the recent debate on the issue, after raising an interest in the past decade with many publications in the literature, is now less treatied. The same objective of sustainability now seems to have lost priority among governments, as the failures in the climate negotiations demonstrates: above all the XV Conference of the UNFCCC Parties in Copenhagen held in 2009 and, to a minor extent, the Paris Agreement signed at the XXI Conference of the parties. The return of nationalism, the effects of the economic crisis of 2008, along with a never overcome environmental denial, are factors that greatly hamper the creation of new systems of rules to protect the environment as well as improving the existing ones (Lockwood 2014). In addition to not find force directly by government action, the goal of environmental sustainability can not be effectively pursued because of some intrinsic defects in the system of global governance. Basically they reside in the excessive fragmentation and complexity of it (Zelli and van Asselt, 2013). Contrary to the concern of a lack of interest of States to act together on the environment, here comes an opposite problem: that of unnecessarily numerous interventions over time, disjointed from each other and very often poorly incisive. The International Environmental Agreements Database Project of the University of Oregon calculates that more than 1,300 multilateral environmental treaties were signed so far, while around 2,300 are the bilateral ones. A considerable number, which places the environment as one of the subjects of greater intervention of the international law, but on the other hand it does not match in terms of results. In addition, the difficulty of coordination between the different actors is a further reason for the ineffectiveness of the system. The current global environmental governance, in its hypertrophy and complexity, not only looks too cumbersome for producing good results, but also tends to be hard to change, because it is too bureaucratized (Najam et al. 2007). However, the discussion on the reform of the system was inaugurated by time and the solutions are varied and modeled over different approaches. In the next section the possible lines of development of the global environmental governance will be examined. Lines of development of the global environmental governance In order to remedy the problems that emerged in the previous paragraph regarding the global environmental governance, several solutions were proposed by governments, international institutions and pundits. They can be distinguished in three different types, all of them always contemplating the sustainability as a final goal. There is, therefore, a revival of a supranational approach with the establishment of a real UN environmental agency meant to replace the UNEP; the promotion of sustainability in the context of national states; the delivering of the matter in the hands of the market and in the actions of privates. With regard to the first solution, the establishment of a UN agency for the environment, this was one of most promoted over time, and it basically consists of the improvement of the system already in adoption: that of a management of the matter in a supranational level. The future UN agency for the environment could be called World Environment Organization (WEO), and thanks to greater powers and to a higher efficiency, it can counterweight the role of the existing WTO (Biermann 2000). It should solve the problems of the poor coordination between the actors, and that of the implementation and the enforcement of the rules established. However, the benefits of a new agency remain uncertain as it could become a further large bureaucracy with modest influence on the system and worsen, instead of improving, the situation (Najam 2003). Secondly, there is the idea of pursuing sustainability in the context of national states. This solution would contradict the initial findings about the widespread geographical effects of environmental problems and about the collective human action logic; however, given the unsatisfactory results of the current global environmental governance, the basic idea of this proposal is to bring the state back at the center of the debate on environmental sustainability, as the main actor and also a beneficiary of effective international environmental policy (Duit et al. 2016). This idea follows the renewed discourse on the sovereignty of nation states, but can only work when they have developed a clear awareness about environmental issues, and have put sustainability at the top of the national agendas. A condition not verified everywhere in the world. Finally, there is the liberal solution of the achievement of sustainability through the logic of the market and the autonomous regulation of private actors, or at least according to a mixed public-private model. Also in this case the acquisition of a solid environmental awareness by the the actors assumes a fundamental role. A positive example of this type is the series of ISO 14000 environmental standards, developed by private actors and established by the NGO ISO (International Organization for Standardization). The norms acts on the management of hazardous waste, the production of green technologies and the transfer of these technologies in developing countries (Clapp 1998). Researches show that in recent years the largest environmental regulatory activities took place in the private sector, consequently of the stalemate of the public action. However, it is still difficult to appreciate the results and above all it is difficult to fully understand if private action is better than the public (Vandenbergh 2013). On the other hand, it is noteworthy that the free market has recently developed quite a feeling for social and environmental ethics leading enterprises to be more sustainable, as evidenced by the increasing adherence to the principles of Corporate Social Responsibility.   In short, these are the three possible ways it can move the global environmental governance: a public-global and cooperative system, a public-national and coercive system and finally a private and self-regulated system  Obviously, these are not the unique paths and may therefore result in hybridizations, but this distinction helps in making clear the framework of the particular models available. 5. Conclusions In this paper the issue of global environmental governance was addressed: it was examined how it evolved over time and what trajectories may take in the future. After highlighting the characteristics of the environmental problems and the difficulties given by the logic of collective action, it was seen how forms of cooperation among states were developed, in order to achieve sustainability at the global level. However, these forms of cooperation are not entirely effective, because of some particular resistance of the states to cooperate and due to a system of governance too fragmented, hypertrophied and bureaucratized. For this reason, new forms of regulation of environmental issues have emerged, providing new solutions than the classic public and supranational model, even though it still remains the most invoked solution. Anyway, the world's new global governance, to be able to be more effective, must be open to the participation of new players, who show the different social needs and the ability to act: from businesses to NGOs to various and other representatives of civil society and of local communities, to scientific and epistemic community. Only in this way it is possible to give vitality and impulse to an atrophied environmental governance system, currently unable to provide the answers needed to achieve sustainability.  Bibliography Abouchar J., Cameron J. (1991), The Precautionary Principle: A Fundamental Principle of Law and Policy for the Protection of the Global Environment, Boston College International and Comparative Law Review, 14(1) 1-27. Biermann, F. (2000). The case for a world environment organization. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 42(9), 22-31. Carson, R. (1962). Primavera silenziosa. Feltrinelli Editore, 1999 edition Clapp, J. (1998). The privatization of global environmental governance: ISO 14000 and the developing world. Global Governance, 4(3), 295-316. Duit, A., Feindt, P. H., & Meadowcroft, J. (2016). Greening Leviathan: the rise of the environmental state?. Environmental Politics, 25(1), 1-23. Fukuyama, Francis. "What is governance?" Governance 26.3, 347-368. Giddens, A. and Barile, G. (2015). La politica del cambiamento climatico. Milano: Il Saggiatore. Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons'(1968) 162. Science, 1243. Krasner, S. D. (1982). Structural causes and regime consequences: regimes as intervening variables. International organization, 36(2), 185-205. Lange, P., Driessen, P. P., Sauer, A., Bornemann, B., & Burger, P. (2013). Governing towards sustainability—conceptualizing modes of governance. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 15(3), 403-425. Likens, G. and Bormann, F. (1974). Acid Rain: A Serious Regional Environmental Problem. Science, 184(4142), 1176-1179. Lockwood, M. (2014). Environmental politics in a cold climate. Juncture, 21(1), 89-96. Najam, A. (2003). The case against a new international environmental organization. Global Governance, 9, 367. Najam, A., Papa, M., & Taiyab, N. (2006). Global environmental governance: A reform agenda. (online) http://www.iisd.org/library/global-environmental-governance-reform-agenda accessed 02/04/18 Olson, M. (1971). The logic of collective action. New York: Shocken Books. Rosenau, J., & Czempiel, E. (Eds.). (1992). Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge Studies in International Relations). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stoker, G. (1998). Governance as theory: five propositions. International social science journal, 50(155), 17-28. Van Bueren Ellen, Environmental Policy, in Encyclopedia Britannica, 2014, https://www.britannica.com/topic/environmental-policy accessed 29/03/18 Vandenbergh, M. P. (2013). Private environmental governance. Cornell L. Rev., 99, 129. Zelli, F. and van Asselt, H. (2013). Introduction: The Institutional Fragmentation of Global Environmental Governance: Causes, Consequences, and Responses. Global Environmental Politics, 13(3), pp.1-13.