Designing the United Nations Environment Programme: a story of compromise and confrontation

The role of the United Nations in global environmental governance was determined in 1972 when a new international body for the global environment was created as a programme within the United Nations rather than as an autonomous specialized agency. A set of political dynamics between developed and developing countries led to the decisions on the functions, form, financing, and location of the new intergovernmental organization—the United Nations Environment Programme. This article traces the historical roots of these choices and exposes the motivations behind them.

论西方人权模式对东亚区域组织的不适性

西方的人权模式是与其整体的经济、政治、社会发展模式紧密相关的,但其人权模式存在弊端,一味地强调保护个人的权利,追求个人欲望的满足,不一定具有可持续性,因而并不完全适合东亚区域组织.     

东亚区域合作与欧洲一体化的发展模式比较

东亚区域合作不同于欧洲的统一观念和制度化建设,主要来自于权力与利益的互动联系,运行中突出市场导向而缺乏制度规范.应认真总结欧洲一体化历程的经验,并与东亚地区合作模式进行比较,以新地区主义视角来探讨适合东亚特色的地区主义合作道路.东亚区域合作应发挥东盟的地区主导作用,完善东盟与中日韩的"10 3"合作机制,共同塑造东亚新地区主义的开放性、协商性和多层次性的特点,实现利益共同体的发展目标.     

区域行政法初论

伴随着区域一体化进程,传统公共行政日渐向区域行政拓展,并推动行政法的转型与变迁,区域行政法得以孕育。区域行政法以"新区域主义"为理论支撑,是跨行政区划政府间协作行政基础上行政法的新发展。区域行政法在调整范围、基本原则与行为机制方面存在着区别于传统行政法模式的显著特征。     

美、日区域经济政策及其启示

区域经济发展不平衡是全世界普遍存在的问题,也是各国政府宏观调控的一个重要目标。美国、日本是世界上最发达的资本主义国家,但仍然存在区域经济发展不平衡问题,为此,美国和日本政府采取了多项措施,制定区域经济政策,以缩小区域发展差距。借鉴美国、日本的成功经验,对促进我国区域经济协调发展具有重要的意义。     

中国区域产业协同发展与《区域产业结构调控法》的制定

区域产业结构趋同是我国区域经济发展中的一个重要问题。这种趋同的根本原因是区域主导产业的选择和布局不是建立在资源禀赋和比较优势上,而是基于地方政府和官员的价值目标和地方利益。区域产业结构的同化,一方面使得各区域产业缺乏规模效益,加剧市场的恶性竞争,另一方面又使得本已匮乏的资源进一步恶化,激化了人与资源的矛盾,阻碍了我国经济进一步协调发展。中央政府先后出台了一系列产业调控与协调发展的政策,旨在扭转失衡的区域产业结构,但效果并不明显。本文分析了我国区域产业结构趋同的深层次原因,认为要从根本上解决这一问题,不仅要制定一系列调控区域产业结构的政策,更应适时地使一部分成熟的政策上升为法律,并在对我国区域产业实证分析的基础上,就制定《区域产业结构调控法》的重要性、调整对象、基本原则、主要内容提出了看法。     

Geopolitical Priorities in Russia's Regional Policies

State regional policies are generally based either on the goal of stimulating the development of specific regions or of equalizing the level of development among the regions. The first path is generally pursued by developing states while rich states favor the second path. Russia has in the past experimented with both vectors of regional policy. Since the annexation of Crimea, a third factor has come to dominate: geopolitics. The main goal of Russia's regional policy is securing control of geopolitically significant territories. The high expense of such a policy makes it unsustainable during a period of economic retrenchment.     

The Role of UNEP and UNDP in Multilateral Environmental Agreements

This study examines the role of the UN’s programmes for environment and development (UNEP and UNDP) in the genesis and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). This is set in the wider context of the changing dominant focus of the international agenda, from ‘environment’ at the Stockholm Conference in 1972, to ‘environment and development’ at Rio in 1992, and ‚sustainable development’ in Johannesburg in 2002. UNDP is a development organisation strongly rooted in its country office network. Its role is becoming increasingly normative however, particularly since 2002 when UNDP opted to root most of its activities on the Millennium Development Goals. UNEP, as an environmental organisation has been successful at catalysing MEAs at the global and regional level; but without a significant increase in its budget over 30 years, its capacity has been spread very thinly. Many of the institutional arrangements for MEAs have effectively become independent of UNEP resulting in a very loosely and sometimes poorly coordinated network. Two case studies are used to illustrate the current institutional arrangements: UNEP’s Regional Seas Conventions and Protocols, and the Convention for Biological Diversity. These illustrate the fragmentation of current institutions, the need for strengthened technical and scientific support, the importance of addressing problems at their root causes and the need to increase the devolution of global governance to the regional level. Satisfying the identified needs requires actions within the remit of both UNEP and UNDP. It is argued that current institutional arrangements have not kept pace with the requirements of evolving policy. As part of a reform process, one option may be to merge the two programmes into a single structure that conserves and strengthens vital technical functions but enables a balanced and integrated approach to sustainable development.     

论省际区域行政立法协作

在地方行政立法模式上,我国目前是以行政区划为单位的分片分块的立法模式。但随着经济横向联系的不断发展,出现了几个省级或市级城市构成的共同经济区域或经济带。为了避免几个相近行政区划内行政立法上的相互冲突,就需要开展一定区域内政府立法协作。这是一个值得提倡的发展趋势,但尚有不少法律问题需要解决。     

Regionalization in East Asia

Institutional regionalization has come very late to East Asia compared with Europe, but its pace has dramatically increased since the mid-1990s. Many agreements, including bilateral ones such as those signed between Japan and Singapore, or pluri-lateral ones such as those between ASEAN countries, cover an ever increasing number of countries of the East Asian region, including Japan, India, and China. We first analyze Asian integration as a de facto, spontaneous, development of trade. Trade specialization in Asia has often been described as guided by the different levels of development of the countries participating in the regional integration. It constitutes a vertical division of labor between poor countries exporting natural resources and/or labor-intensive products to developed countries exporting machinery, sophisticated parts and components, and high-tech products. This trade structure is radically different from the European horizontal division of labor (exchange of different varieties of similar goods). Then we look at the micro-economic level how Japanese firms tend to integrate Asia into their international network, with Japanese partners being used as relays for Japanese export of semi-manufactured products. Last we present a simulation with the MIRAGE model of a scenario of general regionalization in which all the regions of the world develop preferential treatment for neighboring countries. These agreements are limited to industrial products with particular attention to the automotive sector. The main results are that Asia is the main winner in such a scenario, and within Asia it is Japan and Korea that will be the main winners. In fact, because developing Asia is one of the most protected regions of the world, the impact of liberalization is also the highest. Second, Japan and Korea are best placed to profit from these regional agreements, because other developed countries are excluded from the market of developing Asia. They also have superiority in manufacturing goods whereas countries like China might have problems upscaling their industrial production. Nevertheless our model did not take into account the voluntary pace of development chosen by China and that she will use her powerful state system to avoid being locked into low-tech, low-value-added products.

The effectiveness of UN environmental institutions

This is a study of the effectiveness of key UN institutions focussing on environment and sustainable development: the global conferences on development and the environment, the CSD and UNEP, primarily its co-ordinating functions. According to the indicators used to measure effectiveness here, it is concluded that the overall effectiveness of these institutions is quite low. This particularly applies to the CSD. UNEP has been quite effective in creating new institutions but has been less effective in co-ordinating them. As to the global conferences, their significance has been reduced over time.

The political economy of regional integration in East Asia

A widely held consensus view claims that East Asia has been shifting recently from a market-led to an institution-based form of regional economic integration, primarily as a result of the 1997–1998 financial crisis. Next to post-crisis financial cooperation schemes under the ASEAN+3, the surge of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) involving East Asian countries is thought by some to further substantiate this claim. The objective of the paper is to question the validity of this claim. By examining the current state of play of economic cooperation, in the financial and monetary areas as well as in the trade sphere, the paper highlights the limitations of the formal regional integration movement in East Asia to date, as well as the vastly different dynamics underlying the financial and trade developments. It also explores the changing nature of intra-regional trade and investment linkages and concludes that this new form of interdependence may be instrumental in changing the trade-offs of formal regional economic schemes.     

区域经济一体化与行政契约协调机制

区域经济协调发展的本质,是要充分发挥区域优势,形成相互依赖、合理分工、协调发展的经济统一体。区域经济一体化需要法制协调,而行政契约在法制协调中具有比较优势。故要完善行政契约保障机制,以促进区域经济一体化进程。     

Regional standardization in the age at marriage

Age at marriage is an important issue in family, population, and socioeconomic history as well as in cultural anthropology. In preindustrial Japan, regional differences in inheritance customs determined the regional diversity of marriage patterns. The age at marriage in preindustrial Germany also showed a regional diversity, but compared to Japan, it was standardized within the European marriage pattern. The author contends that there were two different patterns of standardization in marriage behavior in Germany, one being the historical consequence of official institutionalization and the other occurring as a process on a macroeconomic level and resulting in a concentration of age at marriage around a mean age. The distribution of the ages at marriage and its historical change in this context is an important variable for the analysis of marriage behavior.     

英美和东亚专利制度历史及其启示

一、前言回顾过去数百年的世界历史 ,我们可以下一个肯定的结论 :世界上最进步的国家无一不是具有强大的技术力量的国家 ;而且 ,这些国家没有例外的都对发明创造活动提供专利制度的保护和激励。 1 8、1 9世纪的大英帝国是近代工业革命的发源地 ,它的工业化水平远超当时欧洲大陆的其他国家 ,而那时候专利制度已经在英伦三岛植根了 3 0 0来年。美国无疑是现在最强大的经济、技术大国 ,和这一地位相匹配的是它那被誉为世界最为先进的专利制度 ,以及那罕见的将激励发明创作的专利制度纳入制宪议题和写入宪法的远见卓识。我国的近邻大和民族 ,在…     

东亚金融货币合作基本元素探析

东亚金融货币合作的三大基本元素分别是流动性支持、区域监测监控以及汇率协调。流动性支持是互助救援机制的概括表现。目前有货币互换机制和亚洲债券基金两类形式。区域监测监控存在于东亚金融货币合作的各个阶段。目前已形成的机制有马尼拉框架组、东盟监督机制以及东盟 3监督机制。三大基本元素中较高层次的当属汇率协调。东亚汇率协调是一个循序渐进的进程。东亚各国需认清形势,将汇率协调的目标分为短期目标和长期目标,在推进短期目标实现的同时逐步过渡到长期目标的阶段性实施。     

区域性公共产品:东亚区域合作的新动力

区域性公共产品理论在区域合作和地区一体化中显示了较强的解释力。东亚区域合作对区域性公共产品的需求,是由该地区各成员国政治、经济和文化的多样性所决定的,提高区域公共产品的供应水平来克服其发展障碍成为东亚各国的内在要求。区域性公共产品与东亚区域合作之间是相互促进的:一方面,区域性公共产品可为东亚区域合作提供新的动力来源;另一方面,东亚区域性公共产品的有效供给与其区域合作的进程是密切关联的,区域合作的不断加强可以使区域性公共产品供给的效率得到改善和提高。     

The Effectiveness and Legitimacy of International Environmental Institutions

The Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) concluded during the past decades have established complex interlinkages between the institutions established by MEAs and institutions such as UNEP, UNDP and the World Bank and the funds administered by the Bank, in particular the GEF. Questions regarding the effectiveness and legitimacy of this system of global environmental governance have arisen both in practice and in research. This essay explores the manner in which these questions have arisen, how they have been addressed in recent research and provides the context for the subsequent contributions to this special issue. Steinar Andresen is professor of political science at the University of Oslo, Ellen Hey is professor of public international law at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam.