International environmental agreements with agenda and interaction between pollutants

This paper analyzes how the sequence of negotiating agreements on each pollutant affects coalition behavior in international environmental agreements (IEAs) when multiple and correlated pollutants exist. I consider a model in which countries suffer from two pollutants with different externality characteristics and attempt to cooperate by sequentially negotiating on IEAs. The membership outcome depends on the environmental concern, abatement technology, spillover effect and most importantly the correlation between pollutants as either substitutes or complements. I find that cooperation in the first stage can facilitate later negotiations and that countries are prone to cooperate on a pollutant of common concern. Moreover, except for symmetric countries, different negotiation agendas may result in distinctive participation outcomes when pollutants are complements. Therefore, with systematic policy design, the negotiation sequence can serve as another method to encourage participation and cooperation in IEAs.     

The effectiveness of international environmental agreements

Many argue that international environmental agreements (IEAs) can alter states’ cost-benefit analyses by providing crucial information about the costs of environmental degradation. Thereby, IEAs may help to effectively curb environmental pollution. However, previous attempts to empirically measure institutional effectiveness found it difficult to provide credible estimates because they have missed to produce convincing counterfactuals. This study empirically estimates the effectiveness of one prominent example of an international environmental institution, the Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution agreement (LRTAP). It sets forth a transparent identification strategy in light of latest advancements in the causal inference literature and presents evidence for the non-effectiveness of the LRTAP in changing member states’ behavior in terms of anthropogenic emissions of two substances (NO _x and SO₂). By deriving and illustrating the use of difference-in- differences (DID) design in the context of IEAs, this study provides a general methodological tool kit to drawing causal inferences about the effectiveness of international environmental institutions.     

Enforcing compliance with international environmental agreements using a deposit-refund system

Whether nations are able to cooperatively manage shared resources through international environmental agreements (IEAs) depends on whether compliance with voluntary commitments can be enforced. Given that nations are sovereign enforcing compliance with IEAs cannot rely on the presence of a strong sanctioning body. Nonetheless, enforcement provisions must be effective in the sense that they will deter non-compliance and credible in the sense that they will actually be imposed. In this paper, we address the problem of enforcing compliance with IEAs by examining one promising mechanism—a deposit-refund system—that exhibits the necessary features for effective enforcement. We analyze a simple model to demonstrate the desirable properties of the mechanism and then consider the effects of imperfect monitoring, uncertainty, partial participation and reputation on the effectiveness of a deposit-refund system.     

Science and Policy in International Environmental Agreements: Lessons from the European experience on Transboundary Air Pollution

Science and policy come together in the use of computer models for International Environmental Agreements (IEAs). We study a successful case in using Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) in defining the long-range transboundary air pollution policies in Europe. In the light of the history of the LRTAP Convention of the UN-ECE, we consider the special circumstances which led to the success of the RAINS model that was employed. We find that the collaborative, self-aware and evolutionary character of the institutional framework built among the LRTAP Convention, IIASA and the EU facilitated the successful adoption of RAINS. We also show how the limits of computer models, fully recognised in this case by producers and users, leave issues of uncertainty, distribution and ethics unresolved. When facing international negotiations, several coalitions might emerge. An analysis of the situtation is done in terms of First-Comers and Late-Comers in Environmental policy, the first group undertaking the initiative to formulate international policies on issues that are of concern to themselves and for which they have acquired technologies, models and know-how, while the second group is just following international policy and most often viewing it as a constraint. This is discussed in the example of the Spanish participation in the negotiations about sulphur emissions in the buildup to the Oslo Protocol. The adoption of the precautionary principle is often being used as a way to handle uncertainty when facing urgent policy responsibilities for environmental issues.     

Transboundary river basin agreements in the Mekong and Zambezi basins: Enhancing environmental security or securitizing the environment?

Multilateral agreements are emerging as important mechanisms for structuring cooperation in politically and ecologically complex transboundary river basins around the world. While such agreements are offered and legitimized as a means to advance ecological and human security, they instead often promote state-centric environmental securitization. As a result, seemingly progressive agreements grounded in international law are likely to precipitate and mask environmental degradation until it becomes serious or even irreversible, creating both ecological and human security crises at a variety of scales. Case studies of wetland ecosystems in both the Zambezi and Mekong basins reveal the material and discursive linkages between international agreements and security. By drawing on critical approaches that acknowledge both the socially constructed and the multi-dimensional nature of sovereignty, this paper exposes significant institutional barriers to ecologically sustainable transboundary cooperation in the two basins.

Linking the global to the national: an application of the international pathways model to examine the influence of international environmental agreements on Cameroon’s forest policy

Cameroon’s tropical forest cover is one of the largest in the world. It is home to some of the world’s rarest plant and animal species. However, the country has suffered extensive forest loss for many decades as a result of socioeconomic and political factors. The growing global concern for the health of the world’s forests and related global issues has placed pressure on Cameroon to sustainably manage its forests. The intricacies of domestic and international pressures on Cameroon’s forest sector means that policy makers have to take into consideration the dynamics of the domestic-international nexus in developing the country’s forest policies. The increasingly integrated global governance of the world’s forests—international agreements, protocols and treaties, international program, international institutions, international actors, and international norms—together constitute international policy regimes that have influenced the direction of Cameroon’s forest policy. Employing the international pathways framework model, an analytic model which describes how transnational actors and international institutions affect domestic policies and policy making, this paper examines the extent to which international environmental agreements have influenced the direction of Cameroon’s forest policy and policy making. The application of the international pathways model facilitated analytic review and allowed for a better understanding of how Cameroon has utilized the complex global forest governance arrangements to enhance its domestic forest policy.     

The self-selection of democracies into treaty design: insights from international environmental agreements

Generally, democratic regime type is positively associated with participating in international environmental agreements. In this context, this study focuses on the legal nature of an agreement, which is linked to audience costs primarily at the domestic level that occur in case of non-compliance and are felt especially by democracies. Eventually, more legalized (“hard-law”) treaties make compliance potentially more challenging and as democratic leaders may anticipate the corresponding audience costs, the likelihood that democracies select themselves into such treaties decreases. The empirical implication of our theory is that environmental agreements with a larger share of democratic members are less likely to be characterized by hard law. Results from quantitative analyses strongly support our argument, shed new light on the relationship between participation in international agreements and the form of government, and also have implications for the “words-deeds” debate in international environmental policy-making.     

Attainability of International Environmental Agreements as a Social Situation

This paper applies the theory of social situations to study whether international environmental agreements (IEAs), mainly those on greenhouse gas emission reductions, can be attained. A game theoretic model is generally a black box for decision makers, where the mechanisms, which lead to solution(s) of the game, are not explicitly pointed out. This paper opens this black box by making the (institutional) move rules explicit. The usual pessimistic outcome with an ineffective and small size of stable coalitions among world regions is countered. Our model challenges conventional wisdom in the sense that large coalitions are possible outcomes of the cartel game, namely by incorporating: (1) farsightedness, and (2) coalitional moves with commitment as an alternative to myopic and individual moves which characterise the cartel game. We show that even if the international negotiations on climate change mitigation are modelled as an n-person prisoner's dilemma, one cannot rule out cooperation among world regions as a solution of the game. Indeed, in most analysed situations the grand coalition is among the solutions of the game. This shows that predictions based on cartel stability may be too pessimistic if it comes to analysing incentives to cooperate in implementing international environmental policy. Moreover, in an empirically calibrated model, we find three out of six instances where Russia (with or without the US) has an incentive to sign the Kyoto protocol.     

Prolonged international environmental negotiations: the roles and strategies of non-state actors in the EU

For scholars of international environmental agreements, the role of non-state actors has been a central focus. There is a considerable literature on the influence of environmental NGOs and business groups on state behaviour and in turn international environmental outcomes. However, much less empirical work has been done to examine the influence of these actors and the strategies they can use in prolonged international environmental negotiations that last for years or decades. This article takes up this task. Drawing on a rich empirical data set on the role of European-based actors in the international climate change negotiations, it considers the influence of non-state actors in prolonged negotiations and identifies four strategies that these actors can use to influence state actors and non-state actors alike.     

Mapping the fragmentation of the international forest regime complex: institutional elements,conflicts and synergies

In the field of global environmental governance, a plethora of international regimes have emerged over the past decades. In some issue areas, multiple regimes aim to govern the issue, sometimes reinforcing, oftentimes conflicting with each other. Consequently, international regime complexes are an empirical phenomenon, which are inherently characterized by specific degrees of fragmentation. For any given issue area, one of the key questions is whether the institutional fragmentation encountered in such regime complexes is synergistic or conflictive in nature. Scrutinizing this question poses methodological challenges of how to delineate a regime complex and how to assess its fragmentation. Drawing on the highly fragmented case of the international forest regime complex, this paper aims to map its institutional fragmentation and to analyse the degrees to which it is conflictive or synergistic. For this we conceptualize the notion of institutional elements and develop a novel method for mapping regime complexes based on their core institutional elements. We then employ tools from the sub-discipline of policy analysis on the complex’s institutional elements for analysing in detail, which of the elements are mutually synergistic and conflictive with other elements of the regime complex. Our results indicate that synergistic relations mostly exist among rather vague elements, often built around sustainability as a core principle. On the contrary, conflictive relations prevail as soon as the elements are designed in more concrete and substantial ways. We conclude that the forest regime complex displays only degree of seemingly synergistic fragmentation through a number of non-decisions and the use of “sustainability” as an empty formula. De facto, conflictive fragmentation prevails among elements of concrete subject matter. This raises questions on whether vast parts of regime complexes merely serve symbolic functions, while conflicts on substance are being camouflaged.

     

The Fight to Globalize Labor: Understanding the Role of Activists in the Spread of International Norms

International relations scholars have traditionally focused on state-centered accounts of international legal norm development between nations while sociolegal scholars have focused on Weberian notions of occupational authority. This study advances a constructivist sociolegal approach emphasizing activist action as playing a unique role in shaping international norms. Specifically, this study investigates labor activists' intervention in U.S. bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) to examine why labor activists chose to initiate FTA disputes as a social movement tactic and how strategic interaction with international legal systems has helped them institutionalize and proliferate the International Labor Organizations' core labor standards. Through semi-structured interviews with legal, union, and government officials, alongside a content analysis of cases filed under the U.S. FTA system, this study shows the role activists played in advancing “globalized” standards in international law. This study finds that activists spread norms through a gradual mechanism of accretion, which focuses on the creation of standards and international legal standing over the individual outcomes of any given case.     

International environmental agreements between developing countries only: learning from the Brazil–Uruguay case over the suspicion of acid rain

This article is about the process of negotiation and implementation of a bilateral environmental agreement between two developing countries. It analyzes the case of the Act of Jaguarão between Brazil and Uruguay on assessing the risk of transboundary air pollution by the President Medici (UTPM) coal-powered thermo-electrical facility in the Candiota region of southern Brazil. The article adds to the scarce literature on international environmental conflict resolution and negotiations between developing countries, especially in Latin America. First, it explains that even with the asymmetry of power between Brazil and Uruguay, negotiation was possible due to a series of factors, such as the interest of Brazilian environmental agencies in improving the monitoring of emissions from UTPM and the international scrutiny of Brazil prior to the upcoming Rio-92 Earth Summit. Both states obtained mutual gains from the agreement by developing ‘joint fact finding’ research and monitoring. Second, different from most of the mainstream literature, the research reveals that weaknesses in institutional agreements, such as a lack of sanctions or deadlines, were not an implementation impediment. In fact, the very weaknesses of the agreement actually enabled authorities in both countries to cooperate in the development of an acid rain monitoring program in the Candiota region, and as a result, to improve air monitoring capacities in both countries. Third, this research shows that the implementation process (1991–2003) produced different results and impacts: it helped to develop technical capacities of environmental agencies in both countries, increased the political power of Brazilian environmental agencies to control UTPM, and pushed for behavioral changes to enable UTPM to respond to the demands of both governments.     

Are international environmental agreements enforceable? implications for institutional design

Over the past several decades, European international environmental institutions have evolved, heeding institutionalist calls for stronger institutions backed by sanctioning and dispute settlement mechanisms. This apparent increase in institutional strength has led to a corresponding increase of the behavioral effectiveness, or active compliance management of institutions as observed in the incidence of arbitral tribunal decisions. However, upon closer examination, it is apparent that this behavioral effectiveness has not been exclusively due to provisions for arbitral tribunal decisions within international environmental agreements. Rather, the incidence and enforcement of these arbitral tribunal decisions is linked to the institutional design of the enforcement mechanisms. Most international environmental agreements rely on parties to raise disputes and enforce commitments, causing individual countries to bear the cost of enforcement. In addition, bringing a dispute to an arbitral tribunal requires the accordance of the parties to the dispute. In contrast, the European Court of Justice allows for enforcement to originate from a strong central authority and for the cases of arbitration to be filed unilaterally. International environmental agreements that have been joined by the European Community and have a provision for an arbitral tribunal have stronger enforcement mechanisms, are more likely to result in enforcement action, and are more effective in generating behavioral change.     

Messages from a middle power: participation by the Republic of Korea in regional environmental cooperation on transboundary air pollution issues

This paper addresses the question whether or not regional middle power states are capable of making a significant contribution to enhancing regional cooperation via regime creation processes. A combination of “nonregime” and the middle power analysis is applied to produce hypotheses about less-developed cases of regime creation in Northeast Asia. Among the attractions of such an approach are that (1) cases of failure to create international regimes as well as cases of success are important to understand the emergence of global governance institutions, and (2) the different roles of various state actors should be understood beyond hegemonic power. The explanatory power of this approach is illustrated by transboundary air pollution issues in Northeast Asia, chosen because the international relations literature has emphasized the development of European regional environmental cooperation and global environmental issues. The paper examines participation by the Republic of Korea (ROK) in both comprehensive and issue-specific environmental cooperative mechanisms to tackle transboundary air pollution. It concludes that the ROK as a middle power has played a promising role to initiate and lead some positive competition between member countries, but at the same time, it highlights challenges that need to be met for creating solid regional environmental cooperation.     

How efficient can international compensation regimes be in pollution prevention? A discussion of the case of marine oil spills

This article studies the deterrent effect of the specific liability and compensation regime defined by the CLC and FUND conventions in the field of marine oil pollution, taking into account its voluntary nature. The discussion is based on a model derived from the economic analysis of international environmental agreements, applied to the case of oil pollution damage compensation. We analyse the conditions under which a FUND-like international compensation scheme is self-enforcing. We then discuss the overall impact of a self-enforcing international compensation regime in terms of accidental oil pollution prevention. We show in particular that the deterrent effect of such a compensation regime is a negative function of (i) the number of countries at stake in the field of oil pollution and (ii) the level of financial caps limiting the compensation for damage.     

Will International Investment Rules Obstruct Climate Protection Policies? An Examination of the Clean Development Mechanism

Rules governing the global environment and the international economy are currently decided in separate arenas. Yet, environmental agreements can have strong economic implications, particularly with the growing use of market mechanisms. Economic liberalization rules, meanwhile, may limit the effectiveness of environmental agreements. This paper assesses the potential interaction between one important market-based environmental mechanism – the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change – and the framework of international investment law.     

Water resources data and information exchange in transboundary water treaties

Despite international calls for data and information sharing in transboundary waters and basin-specific evidence of its importance to cooperative management, no systematic research has been undertaken to answer questions of where, how frequently, and which water resources data and information are exchanged. This paper examines all available transboundary water agreements signed between 1900 and 2007 to determine the degree to which water resources data and information is exchanged in the world??s regions, how the level of exchange has developed over time, and the different ways in which data and information sharing has been codified in practice. In doing so, we reveal important trends regarding the mechanisms, types, and frequencies of water resources data and information sharing??as well as differences across temporal and spatial scales, by treaty type and function, and regime type. The results indicate that data and information exchange as already practiced is more nuanced and, in some senses, widespread than may commonly be recognized. Further, the results reveal key linkages between democracy and data and information exchange and provide a basis to test analogous linkages related to data sharing and other variables in transboundary water settings.     

A Multilevel Test of Minority Threat Effects on Sentencing

Prior studies of criminal sanctioning have focused almost exclusively on individual-level predictors of sentencing outcomes. However, in recent years, scholars have begun to include social context in their research. Building off of this work—and heeding calls for testing the racial and ethnic minority threat perspective within a multilevel framework and for separating prison and jail sentences as distinct outcomes—this paper examines different dimensions of minority threat and explores whether they exert differential effects on prison versus jail sentences. The findings provide support for the racial threat perspective, and less support for the ethnic threat perspective. They also underscore the importance of testing for non-linear threat effects and for separating jail and prison sentences as distinct outcomes. We discuss the findings and their implications for theory, research, and policy.     

Distributed Generation of Electricity: The Role of Academic Research and Advice in California’s “Clean DG” Policy Network

Deregulation and the combined threats of energy crises and global warming concern nations around the world, yet these issues continue to be addressed more directly by domestic regulatory systems than by international institutions. The present analyses of the integration of distributed sources of power generation (DG) into California’s electric utility system suggests that domestic environmental dilemmas with international repercussions provide an obvious entrée for global environmental policy specialists into the practice of environmental policy-making and law. Here I review current scholarship on policy networks that illuminates the contributions that technical and policy experts can make to such networks surrounding environmental issues. I then introduce the key members of California’s “clean DG” policy network that emphasizes the role of academic experts in this influential political system, and discuss how my own research has impacted the development of the state’s DG policy. I conclude that scholars are well positioned to observe and engage domestic and international environmental policy networks, and thereby also to influence environmental politics and law.     

Preventing Transboundary Harm From Invasive Alien Species

The problem of invasive alien species (IAS) is the second biggest threat to biodiversity after loss of habitat. Although customary international law obliges States to prevent transboundary environmental harm such as IAS, international law does not clearly articulate these obligations in this context. A potentially helpful mechanism lies in the use of transboundary environmental impact assessment and risk analysis. However, the operation of these processes, within international environmental law, international quarantine law and international trade law has generated obligations that largely remain soft, ill-defined and inconsistent. This situation is counter-productive to preventing or minimizing transboundary harm caused by IAS.