Parting Thoughts

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the key themes of this book – that nongovernmental organizations are an important, influential actor. NGOs political role, function and influence begins concurrently with the Stockholm conference and continues unabated throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. They successfully leveraged their rational moral authority into political influence that created a symbiotic relationship between United Nations Environment Program and nongovernmental organizations that fostered the sustainable development discourse. The chapter speculates that NGOs do not need sustainable development to harden into a formal regime in order to convince other actors to adopt its normative principles. In short, NGOs continue to work promoting the sustainable development discourse both within and outside the United Nations system. The chapter concludes by commenting that further research is needed to NGOs' political influence over extended periods of time, separate from specific international environmental negotiations.

Nongovernmental organizations continue to work promoting the sustainable development discourse both within and outside the United Nations system. The failure to achieve a sustainable development regime removed enforcement capabilities at the national level. Nongovernmental organizations have, however, successfully moved forward with policy experimentation and implementation that has nevertheless spread the sustainable development discourse.