Breaking the International Environmental Governance Deadlock: Lessons from Other Regimes

On February 3, 2011, the University of Geneva and the United Nations Environment Programme (Regional Office of Europe) will host the first in a series of policy dialogues that are planned for 2011 under the auspices of their newly formed Global Environmental Policy Programme (GEPP). The February dialogue will address the political challenges and opportunities for breaking the deadlock in the international environmental governance process. It will also consider lessons learned from other multilateral diplomacy tracks such as human rights, peace and security, disarmament, and trade.

International environmental governance (IEG) has been the subject of reform for the past two decades. Efforts have taken many forms, with the most recent consultative process of Environment Ministers having recently culminated its work in November 2010.

What is patently obvious from the last reform round is the lack of political will to move beyond incremental changes in order to take the tough decisions needed for fundamental and durable reform of the IEG system. This lack of political will has prevented 20th century institutions of environmental governance from evolving sufficiently in order to govern the complex global sustainability challenges of an increasingly globalised and interdependent 21st century.

Given the dysfunctionalities embedded in the international environmental machinery, cooperative solutions have become impossible, as reflected in the recent outcomes of the Cancun climate negotiations.

It is time to talk more boldly about the need for a new paradigm for environmental governance that is firmly rooted in a global good ethos, which not only recognizes the interconnected nature of worsening global challenges, but which also emphasises the importance of authority and resources to compel collective action in the face of narrow national interests. It is an ethos which also ensures that the voices of the disempowered and disenfranchised are heard and reflected in new global solutions.

There are many important lessons to be learned from other multilateral diplomacy tracks especially institutional innovations in the human rights, peace and security, disarmament, and trade regimes. What these lessons reveal is that fundamental reform is possible, political obstacles and deadlock can be overcome, and that ingenuity and innovation in the multilateral system are possible if and when like-minded forces align.