GEG System Functions
The environmental agenda has expanded and grown in complexity since the establishment of the international environmental regime in 1972. The inherently global nature of many current environmental problems necessitates an effective global response. To this end, a rationalized, integrated and effective global environmental governance structure is needed with the authority, capacity and resources to solve old problems and address emerging challenges. Ultimately, the success of an international agency with the primary responsibility for stewardship of the global environment, or the anchor institution for the global environment, will depend on its ability to deliver five core functions:
Information Function: Problem Identification, Monitoring and Assessment, and Information Exchange
In the environmental field, where problems are dispersed across space and time, sound decision-making hinges on the availability of information regarding (1) environmental problems, trends, and causal relationships, and (2) policy options, results, and compliance with commitments. Data collection, indicator development, monitoring and verification, and scientific assessment and analysis thus emerge as central to sound decision-making. With a better picture of the problem set and issue trends, best practices in science, policy, and technology can be identified. The logic of collective action at the global scale would be clearer and models for action accessible.
Analytical Function: Analysis and Option Evaluation
Progress depends on more than data. Once a problem is identified, it must be studied so that the risks it poses are understood and the costs and benefits of action or inaction can be calculated. Given the range of issues to be addressed and the variety of circumstances under which these issues arise, those responding to international environmental challenges need access to significant analytical capacity. The high degree of uncertainty in the environmental domain and the diversity of underlying values and assumptions require that the analytical process draw on a wide range of perspectives and options.
Policy Function: Negotiation, Rulemaking and Coordination
Successful intervention to address environmental challenges builds on accurate data and sound analysis but also requires that a course of policy action be agreed upon and executed. Coordinating effective policies in the international sphere is especially difficult. Managing interdependence in the context of great diversity calls for an “open architecture” of decision-making, a policy space for sustained environmental interaction, negotiation, and bargaining. International norms, guidelines, and, where necessary, binding rules can be developed. Continued interaction instills a sense of reciprocity, facilitates adoption of common rules and norms, and assists the “internalization of externalities,” tackling potentially contagious phenomena at the source, before they spill across borders. Such a policy forum might engage not only governments in addressing particular issues, but also serve as the launching pad for multi-sector partnerships.
Support Function: Financing and Capacity Development
Real progress cannot be achieved without resources – and to date the commitments made in this regard have generally been regarded as inadequate. Calls for more stable, predictable and adequate funding have come from all sides. However, money alone cannot solve environmental problems. Institutional capacity, good governance, trained personnel, and an aware public are all critical to effectively addressing global environmental concerns. Regrettably, treaty congestion has led to overload at the national level, where the political, administrative, and economic capacity to implement agreements resides. Many international environmental institutions, including the numerous secretariats of international environmental conventions, have some claim on the administrative capacity of national states, developing and developed alike.
Dispute Resolution Function
Without an enforceable legal system with adequate requirements, states, corporations, and individuals lack incentives to exercise environmental stewardship. Severe environmental abuses will only subside if there are universally recognized environmental rights and duties for states and private entities, and a coordinated international architecture to enforce those rights. An environmental dispute-settlement mechanism would “provide a bulwark against domestic political pressures that undermine long-term thinking and serve as an honest broker for the economic future, allocating costs, benefits and responsibilities in transnational disputes” (Esty 1992-1993) While a variety of international and regional courts, tribunals, and MEA dispute settlement mechanisms already exist to adjudicate and arbitrate international environmental disputes, there is no purely environmental international dispute resolution mechanism with compulsory jurisdiction and where entities other than states have standing.
Various institutions currently perform many of these functions, but there remains a pervasive lack of coordination, bundling, processing, and further channeling of the accumulated information and knowledge in a policy relevant manner. The current environmental governance system lacks the mandate, the political will, and the capacity to embrace these functions in an integrated and systematic manner and to respond adequately to the increasing demands on our finite pool of resources. If environmental governance is to become more inclusive, responsive, and equitable, reform of the current institutional structure is imperative. Such reform should reflect the development concerns of developing countries; endorse the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, and link commitments with the appropriate means for their achievement.
