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17071. International Organization and Poverty Alleviation

Author:
William Felice and Diana Fuguitt
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Human Rights and Human Welfare - Review Essays
Institution:
Josef Korbel Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver
Abstract:
Under the leadership of former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and former High Commissioner of Human Rights Mary Robinson, efforts were made to mainstream human rights throughout the entire U.N. system. Annan appealed to all U.N. specialized agencies and affiliated organizations to consider how their work was linked to the corpus of internationally recognized human rights in international law. In one of his last acts as Secretary-General, Annan called for basing new reforms at the U.N. on three notions of freedom: freedom from want, freedom from fear, and freedom to live a life with dignity (Annan 2005).
Topic:
Human Rights
Political Geography:
United Nations

17072. Introduction

Author:
Bernice Lee and Robert Falkner
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Environmental threats are bringing new geopolitical, economic and technological challenges to an already unstable world. We are entering a period of intensified environmental stress, in the form of accelerated ecological degradation and greater risk of shortage and disruption in energy and food supplies, as well as heightened political tensions over control of and access to resources. Current trends call into question the effectiveness of existing governance mechanisms at various levels in dealing with global environmental threats and the unequal distribution of resources.
Topic:
Disaster Relief
Political Geography:
United Nations

17073. Emerging powers, North–South relations and global climate politics

Author:
Andrew Hurrell and Sandeep Sengupta
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
There is a widespread perception that power is shifting in global politics and that emerging powers are assuming a more prominent, active and important role. On this account the global system is increasingly characterized by a diffusion of power, to countries including emerging and regional powers; by a diffusion of preferences, with many more voices demanding to be heard both globally and within states as a result of globalization and democratization; and by a diffusion of ideas and values, with a reopening of the big questions of social, economic and political organization that were supposedly resolved with the end of the Cold War and the liberal ascendancy. There is a strong argument that we are witnessing the most powerful set of challenges yet to the global order that the United States sought to construct within its own camp during the Cold War and to globalize in the post-Cold War period. Many of these challenges also raise questions about the longer-term position of the Anglo-American and European global order that rose to dominance in the middle of the nineteenth century and around which so many conceptions and practices of power-political order, of the international legal system and of global economic governance have since been constructed.
Topic:
Globalization
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Europe

17074. International political economy and the environment: back to the basics?

Author:
Eric Helleiner and Jennifer Clapp
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Since the 1990s, the focus of scholarship on international political economy and the environment (IPEE) has been heavily influenced by the policy agenda promoted by the 1987 Brundtland Report and the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. That agenda advocated the strengthening of the linkages between international economic and environmental cooperation around a grand bargain of 'sustainable development'. The new political buzz around the sustainable development agenda resulted in a surge of IPEE research focused on various kinds of cooperative environment – economy initiatives that emerged from that time onwards, such as the economic dimensions of international environmental governance initiatives, the environmental activities of international economic institutions and regimes, and new kinds of private international regimes governing the environment – economy interface. This work has advanced our understanding of the relationship between the international political economy and the environment in significant ways.

17075. Global environmentalism and the greening of international society

Author:
Robert Falkner
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
A hundred years separate the first International Congress for the Protection of Nature in Paris (1909) and the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen (2009). Both international conferences mark important stages on the long road towards a greener international system. Both witnessed a clash between the idealistic ambitions of environmentalists and the harsh reality of international diplomacy. Both have been described as failures. As world leaders gather in June 2012 at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in Rio de Janeiro, held 20 years after the Rio 'Earth Summit', many observers will no doubt conclude that, despite a century of global environmental rhetoric, green norms continue to be flouted by the Great Powers. Species extinction, deforestation and the destruction of ecosystems continue unabated, while the unmitigated global warming trend threatens global climate stability.
Political Geography:
United Nations

17076. Institutional diffusion in international environmental affairs

Author:
Alexander Ovodenko and Robert O Keohane
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Political institutions are established because organized groups of people seek to achieve certain purposes that can be realized only by creating new institutions or modifying old ones. International institutions reduce transaction costs and uncertainty for governments in their future interactions within a specific issue-area. Once bargaining problems have been overcome, institutions can help to facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation among governments. However, it is rare that only one institutional design could perform these functions in a satisfactory way. So there is scope for choice.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United Nations

17077. Engaging the public and the private in global sustainability governance

Author:
Kenneth W. Abbott
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Negotiators preparing for Rio+20 are missing an important opportunity. Reforming the institutional framework for sustainable development is a central part of the conference agenda. In the run up to Rio+20, negotiators have extensively discussed institutional reforms, but are focusing almost exclusively on intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD). At the same time, however, private sustainability governance is flourishing. Since 1992 numerous organizations created by business, civil society groups, multi stakeholder coalitions and other private actors, as well as diverse public–private partnerships, have adopted important regulatory standards and implemented significant operational programmes, covering financing, project support and information dissemination. Rio+20 negotiators remain almost wholly disengaged from these innovations.
Political Geography:
United Nations

17078. Institutional design and UNEP reform: historical insights on form, function and financing

Author:
Maria Ivanova
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Large-scale environmental problems captured the world's attention in the early 1970s, as countries recognized the close links between environmental integrity and economic prosperity. In response to these problems, states created a system of international environmental governance, with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), established at the 1972 Stockholm Conference, at its core. Since then, the institutional framework has grown in size and complexity, with a steady increase in the number of institutions, agreements, meetings, reports, and actors; yet global environmental concerns remain largely unresolved. In the absence of clear goals, a shared vision, and effective communication and coordination among international institutions, a gap between a growing body of policies and decreasing implementation has become ever more evident.
Political Geography:
United States and China

17079. Complex global governance and domestic policies: four pathways of influence

Author:
Steven Bernstein and Benjamin Cashore
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
In the immediate aftermath of the first (1992) Rio Summit, a surge of optimism about multilateral environmental treaties led to a burst of scholarship on 'regime' compliance and effectiveness. Until then, the literature on international regimes —which had already dominated the study of international institutions for a decade—had largely focused on explaining their rise, maintenance/stability and fall, or debating their importance vis-à-vis formal organizations on the one hand or broad structural features of the system on the other. Environmental regimes became an especially fruitful laboratory for exploring questions of compliance and effectiveness because the newer generation of treaties—in areas such as protection of endangered species, regulation of chemicals or emissions, or protection of biodiversity—was notably and increasingly focused on attempts to influence domestic practices, policies and policy-making processes rather than simply to constrain or modify the external behaviour of states.
Topic:
Regime Change

17080. The changing fortunes of differential treatment in the evolution of international environmental law

Author:
Lavanya Rajamani
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
The past century has borne witness to unprecedented advances in science, technology and prosperity. While these advances have indubitably improved the lives of many, they have also left in their wake an ever-expanding web of patterns of natural resource use and abuse by which few in either the developed or developing world are untouched. Unless these patterns of resource use and abuse are checked, the burdens placed on generations to follow will be both incalculable and unconscionable. As these concerns began to trouble the consciences of sovereign powers, global environmental issues began to feature in the international discourse. From the 1970s, when these issues first made their appearance on the international stage, international law relating to the environment has developed in leaps and bounds. Over the past four decades there has been a rapid expansion in the use of international law in the service of the environment. In a world of unequal states that differ widely both in their contributions to global environmental degradation and in their capacities to respond to it, such widespread resort to international law has proved possible primarily owing to the tailored use in multilateral environ - mental agreements of differential treatment in favour of developing countries.