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UN Conferences and Constructivist Governance of the Environment
1
Revised August 2001
Submitted to Global Governance
By Peter M. Haas
Professor
Department of Political Science
Thompson Hall
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003 USA
Phone 413 545 6174
Fax 413 545 3349
Email haas@polsci.umass.edu
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Abstract
The piece reviews the history of UN Conferences on the Environment. Global
environmental conferences play a part in a broader shift in global environmental
governance. It is now widely accepted that governance occurs in a decentralized manner,
though loosely tied network of multiple actors, states, functional state agencies, and non-
state actors. Accumulated conferences over the last 30 years have contributed to an
aggregate shift in international politics by extending participation and access to
environmental diplomacy to national environmental agencies, to NGOs and to networks
of scientists, leading to a new acceptance of a more comprehensive policy style applied to
designing conferences and regimes for shared environmental threats. This article
concludes with an assessment of the prospects for efforts to encourage sustainable
development at Rio Plus 10.
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Introduction
In this article I review the history of global environmental conferences and draw
political lessons about their broader role in constructing efforts at global environmental
governance, and in particular regarding the future of such global conference diplomacy
for the environment, in particular Rio Plus 10 in Johannesburg in 2002 and the prospects
for reaching UNCED goals for sustainable development. Global conferences are oft-used
policy instruments, and thus deserving of careful evaluation and assessment. Jacques
Fomerand expresses justifiable skepticism that most global conferences are momentary
media events that provide sound bite opportunities without lasting effects on policies or
the quality of the environment.
2
Gallarotti and Barnett & Finnemore offer similar
skeptical judgments about the potential for effective state based international governance.
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Yet Fomerand also points out, as do I below, that many conferences provide indirect
effects that may be beneficial for inducing states to take more progressive steps towards
governance and towards sustainable development.
Governance and Constructivism
Governance has recently become a popular catch phrase of international relations.
Without the prospects of hegemonic leadership, and in light of the substantial growth of
influence of international institutions and non-state actors, international rule making has
become the domain of multiple overlapping actors and regimes, rather than the clearcut
leadership by one state or multilateral conformity with a small and homogeneous set of
shared rules backed by enforcement mechanisms. Anne Marie Slaughter defines it as “the
formal and informal bundles of rules, roles and relationships that define and regulate the
social practices of states and nonstate actors in international affairs.”
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Sustainable
development requires multilateral governance because without well-defined rules and
expectations most countries are incapable of unilaterally protecting themselves from
transboundary and global environmental risks
Constructivist scholars of International Relations have been focussing on the
institutional, discursive and intersubjective procedures by which international governance
develops. John Ruggie writes that “Social constructivism rests on an irreducibly
intersubjective dimension of human action…. constructivism is about human
consciousness and its role in international life…Constructivists hold the view that the
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building blocks of international reality are ideational as well as material; that ideational
factors have normative as well as instrumental dimensions; that they express not only
individual but also collective internationality; and that the meaning and significance of
ideational factors are not independent of time and place”
5
Constructivists look at the
mechanisms and consequences by which actors, particularly states, derive meaning from
a complex world, and how they identify their interests and policies for issues that appear
new and uncertain.
It is now widely accepted by most scholars of International Relations that
governance increasingly occurs in a decentralized manner, through loosely tied network
of multiple actors, states, functional state agencies, and non-state actors who interact
frequently, including, at times global conferences.
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Ann Marie Slaughter writes:
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It occurs through transnational processes of interaction involving not just states,
but governmental, nongovernmental actors and domestic and international
institutions…. the process of internationalization of international legal norms into
the internal value sets of domestic legal systems. This internationalization occurs
through a complex process of repeated interactions, norm enunciation and
interpretation, which occurs in such varied contexts as transnational public law
litigation in domestic courts, international commercial arbitrations, and lobbying
of legislatures by nongovernmental organizations.
The environment is no different.
Constructivists focus on such distinctive processes as socialization, education,
persuasion, discourse, and norm inculcation to understand the ways in which
international governance develops. Typically these are complex procedures, involving
multiple interacting actors that accrue over time and contribute to transformational shifts
in perceptions of national identity, international agendas, and the presumptive ways by
which national interests are to be attained.
UN Conferences contribute to governance and sustainable development by
establishing and reinforcing some of these constructivist themes in international relations.
While, as I argue in greater length below, international conferences seldom have direct
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causal influences on member states’ behavior, their outputs may are part and parcel of
this broader process of multilateral governance, and may contribute to stronger and more
effective environmental governance by states.
Global environmental conferences play a part in a broader shift in global
environmental governance. Accumulated conferences over the last 30 years have
contributed to an aggregate shift in international politics by extending participation and
access to environmental diplomacy to national environmental agencies and to NGOs and
networks of scientists: a process that Jacques Fomerand describes as a “large-scale
process of social mobilization”
8
Over the last 30 years governments have added the
inspirational norm of ecological integrity to the traditional goals of wealth and power.
The most successful conferences have promoted broader processes of social
learning and the construction of new, more comprehensive conceptual frameworks for
global environmental governance through issue clarification, popularization of issues,
and introducing new approaches to environmental policy making to governmental
officials. Through this institutionalized constructivist process of participation and
education new environmental norms of environmental protection have been diffused, and
participating states have been encouraged to endorse them and to apply them nationally.
Gradually many of these norms have been converted to new institutionalized practices by
states, as they have been socialized to new styles of understanding of relations between
economics and ecology, and to new policies for achieving economic development that is
more environmentally sustainable than in the past.
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Global environmental conferences have contributed to aggregate substantive
changes in environmental governance. The Founex preparations for UNCHE contributed
to transcending the environment/development dichotomy in the framing of international
environmental policy. The frames and dominant discourses of the environmental
conferences have shifted from concern about resource scarcity and depletion to efforts to
understand and protect ecosystem integrity, as scientific consensus has crystallized
around comprehensive forms of ecological management doctrines such as Sustainable
Development and the new consensus forged at the 1994 Population Conference in Cairo
that population growth could not be considered in isolation of social issues shaping
family planning choices, including women’s roles in society. Jacques Fomerand, in a
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comparative study of UN world conferences beyond the environment, concludes that
“today it is recognized that population issues must be viewed within the framework of the
close links between population, economic growth, sustainable development, and the
promotion of women’s condition in all its aspects as well as greater gendered equality in
general.”
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Later, UNCED’s Agenda 21 was organized and designed around a matrix of
issues, so that policies would be developed to address the interconnections between
human activities (i.e. industry, agriculture, styles of decision making, consumption
patterns, and technology) and the environment, as well as between global ecosystems
(e.g. the atmosphere, freshwater, oceans and land) with chapters of Agenda 21 designed
to capture the intersections located in each cell of the matrix.
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The earlier UNCHE
framework was organized around the more traditional tripartite administrative framework
of environmental assessment (evaluation and review, research, monitoring, information
exchange), environmental management (goal setting and planning, international
consultation and agreements), and supporting measures (education and training, public
information, organization, financing, technical co-operation)
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While UNCHE was
organized around a conceptual framework of traditional administrative functions,
UNCED was set up to capture the newly appreciated analytic attributes of the issues to be
addressed.
Consequently, when combined with the other array of other institutional and
participatory reforms introduced at various UN environmental conferences over the last
30 years these new frameworks and agendas have led to a much broader shift in
discourse, as new institutions were developed that are responsible for verifying and
carrying out the elements of the agenda, as well as popularizing the language and policy
ingredients for the policy communities worldwide.
Ultimately, international conferences are weak institutional features of
international relations and are unlikely to induce profound changes by themselves or
exercise sustained influence on states. They lack many of the properties of institutions
that constructivists look to transform state beliefs and practices, including iterated
interactions, autonomous secretariats staffed with professionals recruited on merit,
independent and capable executive heads, resources for meaningful technological and
resource transfers, and significant budgets. Governments generally closely follow the
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preparatory activates in order to assure that they are not confronted with any unpleasant
political surprises at the actual Conferences. Because of their one-off frequency, there is
limited access to top-level officials, and it is difficulty to maintain long-term pressure on
governments through national reporting, information circulation, oversight, or lobbying.
Thus it is difficult for transnational policy networks to organize and consolidate influence
through global environmental conferences. Global environmental conferences generally
lack significant political or financial resources for inducing change on states, and lack
any lock-in mechanisms by which decisions become deeply institutionalized within the
legal and political systems of attending countries. Occasionally though some conferences
are able to generate significant outputs or mobilize individual forces that have longer
term repercussions internationally.
UN Conferences, though, are quite different from the G8 Summits in this regard.
Unlike the one shot nature of UN Conferences, the G8 summits are part of smaller
institutionalized discussions amongst trade and finance ministers and bureaucrats, who
maintain frequent interactions at G-8 Summits, OECD working groups, IMF working
groups, BIS working groups, and private conferences. Unlike these small ongoing
private group meetings, UN Conferences enjoy greater broader political legitimacy by
virtue of their universal representation and the opportunity for middle level powers to
have a say.
The effects of the most successful conferences have been to increase national
concern, and to increase government capacity to politically and technically address
problems by means of agenda setting, consciousness raising, expanding participation,
monitoring, knowledge generation and diffusion, target setting, norm development and
diffusion, and administrative reforms. In addition have helped to channel financial,
technological and scientific resources to needy countries.
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UN Conferences and Constructivist Governance of the Environment
Global UN conferences on the environment are widely understood as an
institutional innovation of the 1970s. With mounting concern about the degradation of
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the physical environment, governments approached the UN to convene a number of
global conferences to address the host of human activities with transboundary and global
environmental consequences. These environmental conferences were part of a broader
effort at global problem solving for a new class of global problems associated with
international interdependence. As global interdependence became increasingly
politicized in the 1970s, the UN system turned to global conferences as a way to highlight
the interconnections between issues that had previously been treated in isolation. The
topics of the global conferences were new to the international agenda, as previous
multilateral conferences had principally addressed international economic topics, human
rights and arms control.
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. The UN, as the only venue with global participation, was the
logical forum for such meetings to include all the affected countries.
The 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, and 1992 UN Conference
on Environment and Development directly addressed the subject of environmental
protection, but special UN Conferences devoted to aspects of human impacts on the
environment became commonplace in the 1970s. The frequency with which such global
conferences were held diminished in the 1980s and 1990s, other than the decadal
meetings of conferences on population, women, and food, as well as the follow-up annual
reviews to UNCED of the UNCED commitments, and the more comprehensive and high
profile UNCED + 5 meeting in 1997 and UNCED + 10 to be held in 2002. Early
international environmental conferences included the ill fated 1910 Hague Conference on
Conservation and the United Nations Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of
Resources, held at Lake Success, New York, in 1950.
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These global conferences were intended to mobilize concern about new problems,
and to coordinate national actions to study and monitor environmental quality and human
activities with environmental consequences, as well as developing joint measures to
prevent various sources of environmental degradation and attenuate the effects of human
actions on the environment. Economic and equity concerns cut across most of the other
specialized conferences.
Typically the conferences last for several weeks, with high level diplomatic
attendance for the last two or three days to overcome political deadlocks and to sign
legally binding resolutions and other commitments developed at the Conference.
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Decisions are generally reached by consensus, so negotiations are slow. Preceding the
Conferences though are often several rounds of sessions of ad hoc Preparatory
Committees (“Prep Coms”), often spread over one or two years, at which national
delegations are presented with background papers and preliminary negotiations are
conducted on the documents intended to be approved at the Conferences themselves.
Most of the arduous work of reconciling political differences occurs during the sessions
of the preparatory committees.
Generally the global UN conferences on the environment have produced
declarations and action plans for subsequent activities. The most influential conferences
endorsed new policy doctrines and policy targets for the international community, and
also authorized the creation of new international organizations, approved legal
commitments and generated new financial resources. Others have failed to spark
international concern or to catalyze robust international commitments and action, and
have remained virtual dead letters, such as the 1977 Desertification Conference, 1979
Conference on Science & Technology for Development, and the Conferences on Human
Settlements. The most productive, in terms of their administrative accomplishments, have
been UNCHE, the 1974 World Food Conference, UNCED, and the 1994 International
Conference on Population and Development.
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The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in
Stockholm, Sweden was the first major global environmental conference. Sponsored by
the UN, it convened 113 countries to discuss contemporary environmental issues.
UNCHE adopted the Stockholm Declaration, establishing 26 principles of behavior and
responsibility to serve as the basis for future legally binding multilateral accords; the
Action Plan for the Human Environment that specified 109 recommendations in the areas
of environmental assessment, environmental management, and supporting institutional
measures.
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Implementation was intended for governments and IOs.
The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in
Rio de Janeiro, marks the high water mark of these outputs. UNCED adopted the
Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and
the Forestry Principles. In addition to those three pieces of hard law, UNCED adopted
the Rio Declaration with 287 principles guiding action and a sweeping action plan to
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promote sustainability called Agenda 21, with 2509 specific recommendations elements
applying to states, international institutions, and members of civil society. The
Commission on Sustainable Development was created to ensure effective follow-up of
UNCED; to enhance international cooperation and rationalize intergovernmental
decision-making capacity; and examine progress in Agenda 21 implementation at the
local, national, regional and international levels.
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The variation in the degree of influential outputs from conferences is due to a
number of factors. The more productive conferences were free of profound political
schisms or geopolitical tensions amongst major parties including Cold War tensions
between US and USSR. The environment was not nested in a politically irreconcilable
frame of profound North-South cleavages. The issue at hand was of immediate concern
to the interests of the industrialized countries either due to popular concern within the
countries, or perceived linkages between the subject and material national interests that
would lead major donor states to commit resources to dealing with the issues. Robert
Putnam and Nicholas Bayne inferred a number of similar background conditions to
successful G-7 Summits.
19
UNCHE, for instance, was held at a fortuitous moment. Domestic environmental
movements were just becoming active in the US and Europe. Potentially profound
North-South disagreements were avoided by prior high level discussions that rejected the
conceptual dichotomy between economic growth and environmental protection, extended
the international agenda to include environmental concerns of the South regarded natural
resource policy as well as the pollution concerns of the industrialized countries, and
providing a notional commitment to 'additionality' and financial assistance on behalf of
the North.
20
Environmental protection was not seen as being inconsistent with other
established goals in international negotiations, including national security and economic
liberalization. UNCHE also provided the first opportunity for China to stake a position in
international diplomacy following US recognition. North-South relations became more
acrimonious with the NIEO discussions in the late 1970s, and it proved harder to forge
consensus at international conferences. Even with these factors, Cold War divides still
modestly influenced the Conference, as the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc countries
withdrew at the last minute over the participation of West Germany, yet because the
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superpowers were in a period of détente such tactical linkages were not perceived as
provocative and freighted with cold war significance.
Effectiveness
It is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of many of these conferences, in part
due to weaknesses and gaps in our ability to monitor progress in achieving such goals.
The record is generally mixed, at best, in terms of achieving the targets and aspirations
expressed in the action plans and declarations of the Conferences. It is difficult to
directly measure effects on the environment, and the record of states in complying is
mixed or uncertain. At UNCED + 5 the General Assembly and the Commission on
Sustainable Development tried to evaluate overall progress achieved since UNCED. It
determined, amongst many observations, that production and consumption patterns had
become more energy efficient in industrialized countries; land use conflicts are more
acute in developing countries between competing demands for agriculture, forest cover
and urban uses; and that water scarcity remains a major threat to development and human
health in developing countries.
21
In short, it is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the conferences on state
policies and on observable environmental impacts. It would be unreasonable to expect
such conferences to yield lasting and clear effects on states and on the environment. It is
equally unreasonable to assign blame to conferences for failing to reverse environmental
decline.
A full list of global environmental conference is presented in the following table.
Global Environmental Conferences Since 1970
Year Name/location Product/outcome
1972 United Nations Conference on the
Human Environment (Stockholm)
Declaration of Principles
Action Plan
UNEP
1974 World Food Conference (Rome) Universal declaration on the
eradication of Hunger and
Malnutrition
World Food Council
IFAD
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1974 World Population Conference
(Bucharest)
World Population Plan of Action
1975 Second Women’s Conference
1977 UN Water Conference (Mar del
Plata)
International Drinking Water Supply
and Sanitation Decade (1981-1991)
1977 UN Conference on Desertification
(Nairobi)
Plan of Action to Combat
Desertification
1978 UN Conference on Human
Settlements (Vancouver)
UN Centre for Human Settlements
Global Strategy for Shelter to the
Year 2000
1979 UN Conference on Science and
Technology for Development
(Vienna)
Vienna Programme of Action on
Science and technology for
Development
1979 World Climate Conference (Geneva)
1981 UN Conference on New and
Renewable Sources of Energy
(Nairobi)
Nairobi programme of Action for the
Development and Utilization of New
and renewable sources of Energy
1984 World Conference on Agrarian
reform and rural Development
(Rome)
Programme of Action on Agrarian
reform and rural Development
1984 2
nd
World Population Conference
(Mexico City)
1985 3
rd
Women’s Conference
1990 2
nd
World Climate Conference
(Geneva)
IPCC
1992 UNCED (Rio de Janeiro) Rio Declaration
Agenda 21
Framework Convention on Climate
Change
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Convention on Biodiversity
Forest principles
UNCSD
1994 International Conference on
Population & Development (Cairo)
Programme of Action
1995 Fourth World Conference on
Women (Beijing)
Beijing Declaration and Platform of
Action
1996 Habitat II (Istanbul) The Habitat Agenda and Istanbul
Declaration on Human Settlements
1996 World Food Summit (Rome) Rome Declaration on World Food
Security and World Food Summit
Plan of Action
1997 UNGA Special session on
Sustainable Development
Source: Jacques Fomerand “UN Conferences; Media Events or Genuine Diplomacy”
Global Governance Vol 2 No 3 (1996) pp 361-375; Thomas G. Weiss, David P.
Forsythe, and Roger A. Coate The United Nations and Changing World Politics 2
nd
edition Westview Press, 1997 esp. chapter 9 “Ecodevelopment and the United Nations”;
Lynton Caldwell International Environmental Policy Duke University Press, 1996.
Functions of Conference Diplomacy
Global environmental conferences also have a number of indirect effects with
longer-term effects on national policies affecting international governance and the
prospects for sustainable development. Absent a strong theory of state interests it is not
possible to draw clear causal inferences about the influence of international conferences
on state interests and practices. Theorists across paradigmatic divides (other than staunch
rational choice theorists who would contend that variation in conference outcomes is due
to deliberate design) should be able to agree that conferences able to mobilize more of
these functions will have a stronger impact on member states than will conferences
unable to mobilize as many. Some variables are of interest to neoliberal institutionalists
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because they influences state assessments of the economic cost of environmental
pollution, the ecological benefits of its solution, and the political coalitions associated
with each. For constructivists, important variables are those informational channels and
actual pieces of information that shape states’ appreciation of how their citizens are
affected by environmental degradation and the political coalitions that support
environmental protection. The casual mechanisms by which institutional factors influence
state choice, and predictability of their effects are highly contingent, depending upon
national administrative characteristics and matters of timing in the domestic political
climate. Moving beyond a systemic level of analysis, variation in individual state’s
sensitivity to these functions of conference diplomacy would probably vary by at least the
following national level factors: freedom of the press, literacy, access to the media, and
democratic institutions enabling citizens to express concern to governments (state/society
relations).
22
While you can’t directly stop human activities that degrade the environment through
universal declarations or at conferences, global UN conferences have served a number of
distinctive political and social purposes that influence governments’ concern about the
environment and their willingness to commit scarce political and financial resources to its
protection.
• Agenda Setting
Global environmental conferences can place new issues on the global agenda and
galvanize national concern by publicizing new issues. The conferences often have the
effect of reframing issues for decision makers, locating the issue within a new political
matrix and thus making possible new tactical and substantive linkages by which policies
may be developed.
23
For instance, environmental protection was firmly placed on the
international agenda at the UNCHE conference, and the preliminary Founex meeting
effectively reconciled North-South differences about the priority accorded to
environmental considerations in economic planning, establishing the principal that the
two goals could be compatible, especially with concessionary finance from the North to
pay for incremental pollution control costs in the developing countries. UNCHE also
helped inform Northern governments of Southern countries’ concern with an alternate
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agenda that would supplement the North’s primary focus on industrial pollution, waste
management, and transboundary environmental threats with a focus on resource
deterioration, deforestation and water quality, and the underlying problems of insufficient
money for sewage treatment and effective resource management.
The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development shifted the public
debate or discourse on population issues to a focus on the underlying social and political
and economic forces that influence population growth. The Programme of Action
marked a distinctive shift in population policy towards cooperation to eradicate poverty,
encouraging universal access to health care services, and women’s empowerment.
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• Popularizing issues and raising consciousness
Conferences provide a brief window of opportunity for educating mass publics and
government officials about environmental issues. Conferences spawn publicity about the
declarations and statements of principles issued at them. Because many journalists attend
the conferences, they provide an opportunity for NGOs and the media to publicize issues
in their national media as well as for educating members of the media about
environmental issues. For instance, at UNCED the Natural Resource Defense Council
sent one person whose responsibility was to court the media and frame the presentation of
the daily reporting in a way that would be critical of the US and thus hope to provoke the
US to take a more environmentally sympathetic role at the conference, once decision-
makers in D.C. saw the reportage and estimated the potential domestic political damage
of being seen to undermine the success of an international environmental conference.
• Generate new information and identify new challenges for governments
Preparation for conferences often generates information for countries about their
environmental problems, the array of policies available for addressing such issues, and
the political coalitions organized around them. States are invited to submit national
reports about conditions in their countries in advance of the conference, and this process
can lead states to learn of new problems, clarify their recognition of their national
interest, and identify the political landscape potential for compromise. These reports are
often synthesized by the secretariats for subsequent dissemination.
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• General alerts and early warning of new threats
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Conferences help focus attention on new problems, and also help to identify
institutional gaps and needs in addressing such problems. The “Assessment of the World
Food Situation”, presented to 1984 World Food Conference, helped focus attention on the
“world food gap” that threatened developing countries. UNCHE helped to identify the
urgency of addressing land based marine pollution, as well as identifying the institutional
need of creating a global environmental monitoring system, that subsequently became
one of UNEP’s core activities.
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• Galvanize administrative reform
Conferences also prompt governments to create or reform national bodies
responsible for forms of environmental protection. National administrative bodies serve
as the nodes of transnational environmental policy networks. At the time of UNCHE
only 26 governments had administrative agencies responsible for environmental
protection (15 in the developing countries, 11 in developing). The preparation for
UNCHE led many governments to recognize the need for creating national environmental
agencies. By 1982 the total number was up 144 (34 in Developed, 110 in developing.
UNCED led to the establishment Sustainable Development committees and bodies in
nearly 150 countries.
27
• Adopt new norms, Certify new doctrinal consensus and set global standards
Global conferences are sites of doctrinal contestation. UNCHE developed new
principles of soft law that have been interpreted and applied by international lawyers to
inform a generation of international environmental law.
28
Specific programmatic action,
such as the 2,509 specific proposals in Agenda 21 set the stage for legitimate responses to
international conferences. The identification of numbers of people at risk from
malnutrition, and targets for official development assistance (ODA) and hunger reduction
stipulated at World Food Conferences similarly establish standards and aspirations for
subsequent governmental practices.
• Mass involvement of new actors
International environmental conferences contribute to the participation of new actors
in international environmental politics through the invitation of new groups of actors to
attend international conferences. Environmental conferences have been leaders in the
introduction of NGOs to international diplomacy. These meetings developed the practice
17
of parallel NGO conferences to the governmental conferences, as well as allowing NGO
participation as observers at the governmental conferences. Roughly 178 NGOs
participated at UNCHE.
29
Over 1400 were represented at UNCED.
Despite the vast increase in numbers of NGOs attending international environmental
conferences, the participation is still heavily tilted towards the North, where NGOs have
greater financial support and are better able to find resources to attend conferences. At
UNCED, 70% of the registered NGOs came from industrialized countries.
Conferences provide the potential for networking and developing transnational issue
networks to coordinate international campaigns, and NGOs may subsequently provide
information to governments and apply pressure on governments.
Conferences often invite participation from major non-state groups, including NGOs,
the transnational scientific community, and, since UNCED, multi national corporations.
30
Such groups are invited to attend expert group meetings in advance of the conference as
well as parallel NGO events and even as observers at governmental meetings.
Participation is often, particularly in preliminary meetings, by expert advisory groups of
specialists such as GESAMP and ICSU, and umbrella industry NGOs such as the ICC.
Global environmental conferences may be deliberately designed to foster new
coalitions more generally, and to build support for environmental protection at the
national level by including the political influence of transnational policy networks.
Maurice Strong, the Secretary General of UNCHE and UNCED coined the phrase “the
process is the policy” to capture the idea that through conference diplomacy more actors
and perspectives could be introduced to international environmental policy making.
There is still wide variation in the extent of NGO influence at conferences. The
rules of participation remain set by states’ decisions in ECOSOC, and the organizations
are continually constrained (if not totally hamstrung) by state choices to allocate
resources and set rules of behavior for the organizational dealings with NGOs. NGOs are
often more influential at national and community levels, but participation and recognition
at international conferences reinforces or establishes their domestic claims to authority.
Yet even while states cling to formal sovereignty, the exercise of practical sovereignty
erodes from NGO participation.
31
Still, Realists would be quick to point out that the
18
willingness to extend participation to NGOs is given by states, and is always subject to
being reversed.
Prospects for Rio Plus 10 and Sustainable Development
The aggregation of UN conferences and constructivist forces has been to create a
diffuse array of pressures on states militating for forms of SD. Rio Plus 10 provides the
next major opportunity for reforming and streamlining multilateral environmental
governance. It is intended to refocus international attention on Sustainable Development
and assess accomplishments since 1992.
Yet, as of the writing of this piece in August 2001, it lacks most of the properties
of conferences that led to productive outputs that contributed to improved international
environmental governance. Rio Plus 5 was widely regarded as a failure in this regard, as
it did not mobilize any long-standing interest. Mass public interest in sustainable
development remains weak, and the US appears to be developing a new global diplomatic
posture of skeptical multilateralism, at best, as seen by the abandonment of the Kyoto
Protocol. Consequently there is little political impulse for a productive conference.
Multilateral financial and technological transfers for sustainable development have
dwindled since early 1990s. Moreover, there is growing disenchantment with UNEP’s
remote location in Kenya and its lack of resources. The Commission for Sustainable
Development lacks the administrative autonomy or financial resources to be able to reach
out to civil society to develop any of the conference functions discussed above that could
potentially influence state policies and environmental quality, and states appear
increasingly concerned about controlling NGO participation at the meetings.
The best prospects are probably institutional reforms. The international
environmental governance system has not been significantly overhauled in three decades.
After UNCHE, UNEP was the only international institution responsible for
environmental protection. Since then, however, most international institutions have
assumed some environmental responsibilities. Recent evaluations suggest that there are
administrative overlaps in the system, as institutions have assumed new responsibilities
for the environment, as well as inefficiencies in the system.
32
Suggestions for
19
improvements focus on reforming UNEP and on the creation of a Global Environmental
Organization (GEO).
A GEO should be established to fulfill the policy and technology-based functions
that provide institutional support for multilateral environmental governance. A GEO
would consolidate environmental policy research, technology databases and
clearinghouses; conduct training; and centralize the secretariats that administer current
environmental regimes. Centralizing these secretariats would facilitate the creation of a
broader global policy network across specific environmental issues and justify the
creation of national environmental embassies to represent states and participate in future
negotiations. A GEO could also serve as a legal advocate for environmental protection
and regulations to counterbalance the WTO by collecting a roster of international
environmental lawyers to participate in WTO panels. The GEO should have high-profile
annual ministerial meetings to address all environmental issues to assure widespread
involvement in environmental policy networks and galvanize rapid responses to new
alerts. Ongoing efforts would continue to be addressed through the existing secretariats
and conferences of parties. The GEO could even have a panel of environmental
inspectors available to verify compliance by states and firms with multilateral
environmental agreements. UNEP would be retained as the monitoring and research hub
of the UN system, as it was initially intended by its architects at UNCHE. The UNCSD,
as well as some other institutional bodies within the UN and Bretton Woods systems
could be absorbed into the GEO.
Conclusion
UN environmental conferences have helped contribute to a broader shift in
international environmental governance through educating governmental elites, exposing
them to new agendas and discourses, and providing them with added resources to pursue
sustainable development. While Rio Plus 10 lacks many of the conditions that have
accompanied successful conferences, at the least Rio Plus 10 may encourage multi-level
participation, improve contact between civil society and states, and streamline
20
institutional responsibilities within the UN and Bretton Woods systems for sustainable
development.
1
For comments on earlier drafts I thank Neta Crawford, Kimo Goree VI, Ernst B. Haas,
and Peter Sand. Zuhre Aksoy provided valuable research assistance.
2
Jacques Fomerand 1996 “UN Conferences; Media Events or Genuine Diplomacy”
Global Governance Vol 2 No 3 pp 361-375.
3
Michael N. Barnett and Martha Finnemore “The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of
International Organizations” IO Autumn 1999 Vol 53 No 4 pp 699-732; and Guilio
Gallaroti “The Limits of International Organization”: IO 1991 Vol 45 No 2 pp 183-220.
4
Anne-Marie Slaughter et al “International Law and International Relations Theory”
American Journal of International Law July 1998 p 371.
5
John Gerard Ruggie “The Social Constructivist Challenge” IO Autumn 1998 Vol 53 No
4 p 856, 879.. For other presentations of social constructivism in IR see Emanuel Adler
2001 “Constructivism in International relations” in Walter Carlsnaess, Thomas Risse, and
Beth A. Simmons eds. Handbook of International relations Sage, and Peter M. Haas
“Policy Knowledge and Epistemic Communities” for The International Encyclopedia of
the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
6
Anne Marie Burley :”New World Order” Foreign Affairs David Held and Anthony
McGrew, David Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton Global Transformations Stanford
University Press, 1999 pp 53-58; Keohane & Nye Complex Interdependence 3
rd
Edition.
7
Anne-Marie Slaughter et al “International Law and International Relations Theory”
AJIL July 1998 p 381.
8
Fomerand p 364.
9
Peter M. Haas “Social Constructivism and the Evolution of Multilateral Environmental
Governance” in Aseem Prakash and Jeffrey A. Hart eds. Globalization and Governance
Routledge, 1999; Peter M. Haas “ Institutionalized Knowledge and International
Environmental Politics” in John Ikenberry and Vittorio Parsi Handbook of International
Relations 2001, Rome; and Peter M. Haas “International Environmental Governance” in
Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and P.J. Simmons eds. Managing a Globalizing World
Washington DC: The Brookings Press, 2001.
10
Fomerand p 370. The same conclusion is drawn in Mukul Sanwal 1993 “Sustainable
Development, the Rio Declaration, and Multilateral Cooperation” Colorado Journal of
International Environmental Law and Policy Winter Vol 4 No 1 pp 45-68.
11
”Structure and Organization of Agenda 21” A/CONF.151/Pc/42 9 July 1991.
12
“Report of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment” A/Conf.48/14
3 July 1972 p 23 UNEP 1981 In Defense of the Earth
Nairobi: UNEP.
13
Peter M. Haas, Robert O. Keohane and Marc A. Levy eds.1993 Institutions for the
Earth Cambridge: MIT Press; Jacques Fomerand 1996 “UN Conferences; Media Events
or Genuine Diplomacy” Global Governance Vol 2 No 3 pp 361-375; and Wolfgang H.
Reinecke and Francis M. Deng 2000 Critical Choices Toronto: IDRC.
21
14
On the previous generation of global conferences see Johan Kaufmann 1988
Conference Diplomacy 2
nd
edition UNITAR; and Peter Willetts “The Pattern of
Conferences” in Paul Taylor and A.J.R. Groom eds. Global Issues in the United Nations’
Framework New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989..
15
. My thanks to Peter Sand for reminding me of this prehistory. See also John
McCormick Reclaiming Paradise
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
16
Thomas G. Weiss and Robert S. Jordan 1976 The World Food Conference and Global
Problem Solving New York: Praeger; Lynton Caldwell International Environmental
Policy Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.
17
The Results from Stockholm 1973 Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag.
18
MichaelGrubb et al 1993 The Earth Summit Agreements A Guide and Assessment
London: Earthscan and Royal Institute of International Affairs.
19
Robert D. Putnam and Nicholas Bayne Hanging Together 1987 Harvard University
Press.
20
Wade Rowland 1973 The Plot to Save the Earth Toronto; Maurice Strong 1973 “One
Year After Stockholm” Foreign Affairs Vol 51 No 4.
21
“Overall Progress Achieved Since the United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development” E/CN.17/1997/2.
22
Peter M. Haas 1998 “Compliance with EU Directives” Journal of European Public
Policy Vol 5 No 1 pp 38-65; and Peter M. Haas 2000 “Choosing to Comply” in Dinah
Shelton ed. Compliance with Soft Law Oxford University Press.
23
Ernst B. Haas 1980 “Why Collaborate” World Politics, Vinod K. Aggarwal ed. 1998
Institutional Designs for a Complex World Ithaca: Cornell University Press
24
Lori S. Ashford March 1995 “New Perspectives on Population” .Population Bulletin
Vol 50 No 1; Gita Sen January/February 1995 “:The World Programme of Action: A
New Paradigm for Population Policy” Environment
25
For instance International Conference on Population and Development “Synthesis of
national reports on Population and Development” UN Document A/49/489 (6 October
1994).
26
Branislav Gosovic 1992 The Quest for World Environmental Cooperation London:
Routledge.
27
E/CN 17/1997/2 p 24.
28
Edith Brown Weiss 1996 “The Changing Structure of International Law” Georgetown
University Law Review Edith Brown Weiss, Daniel Barstow, and Paul C. Szasz 1992
International Environmental Law
Dobbs Ferry: Transnational Publishers.
29
Anne Thompson Feraru 1981 “Stockholm and Vancouver: The Role of ISPAs at UN
Conferences” in William M. Evan Knowledge and Power in a Global Society
Sage
Publications.
30
Stephan Schmidheiny 1992 Changing Course MIT Press.
31
. Ann Marie Clark, Elisabeth J. Friedman, and Kathryn Hochstetler 1998 “The
Sovereign Limits of Global Civil Society” World Politics Vol 51 No 1 October pp ();
Kathryn Hochstettler, Ann Marie Clark, and Elisabeth J. Freidman “Sovereignty in the
Balance” International Studies Quarterly Vol 44 No 4 (2000) pp 591-614.
32
For a review of these proposals see Global Environmental Politics Vol 1 No 1 (2001);.
Frank Biermann, “The Case for a World Environment Organization,” Environment, vol.
42, no. 9 (November 2000), pp. 22-31; Calestous Juma, “The UN’s Role in the New
22
Diplomacy,” Issues in Science and Technology, vol. 17, no. 1 (Fall 2000), pp. 37-38; Dan
Esty, “The Case for a Global Environmental Organization,” in Peter B. Kenen, ed.,
Managing the World Economy: Fifty Years after Bretton Woods (Washington, D.C.:
Institute for International Economics, 1994), pp. 287-309; David Downie and Marc A.
Levy “UNEP” in Pamela S. Chasek ed. The global environment in the twenty-first
century Tokyo: UNU Press, 2000.
