Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Global Governance of the Environment: Multiple Accountability Disorder?

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Global Governance of the Environment, Indigenous Peoples and the Rights of Nature

  • 691 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter provides an introduction to the concept and practice of global governance, with a focus of global environmental governance, tracing its history and evolution over the twentieth century and its articulations in the third decade of the twenty-first century. It examines how global governance has been reconceptualized and reimagined to incorporate new players at the ground level, including indigenous peoples, who have been able to participate in and contribute to global governance through travel to international conferences and the utilization of new means of communication, including the use of social media networks which have transformed intergovernmental and non-governmental movements, creating new political forces. The chapter examines the intersections among institutions of global governance, among intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector in order to analyse the workings of power that influence decision-making at all levels.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 89.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • 3BLMedia. 2019. “UN Global Compact Welcomes the Belt and Road Leaders’ Endorsement of the Ten Principles.” UN Global Compact Press Release, 30 April. https://www.3blmedia.com/News/UN-Global-Compact-Welcomes-Belt-and-Road-Leaders-Endorsement-Ten-Principles. Accessed 14 April 2021.

  • Agné, Hans, Lisa Dellmuth, and Jonas Tallberg. 2015. “Does Stakeholder Involvement Foster Democratic Legitimacy in International Organizations? An Empirical Assessment of a Normative Theory”. Review of International Organizations 10 (4): 465–488.

    Google Scholar 

  • Andes Petroleum. 2020. “Our Commitment.” http://www.andespetro.com/html/Commitment_2_29.htm. Accessed 19 August 2020.

  • Archibugi, Danieli. 2012. “Cosmopolitan Democracy: A Restatement.” Cambridge Journal of Education 41 (1): 9–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Archibugi, Danieli, and Pease, Alice. 2018. Crime and Global Justice: The Dynamics of International Pun.ishment. Oxford: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Banks, Nichola, and Hulme, David. 2012. “The Role of NGOs and Civil Society in Development and Poverty Reduction.” Brooks World Poverty Institute (BWPI) University of Manchester. Working Paper, June.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burgis, Tom. 2015. The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth. London: William Collins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carrillo Santarelli, Nicolás. 2019. “A Step In The Right Direction: Corporate Responsibility Under The 2019 Revised Draft. Part II: The Recognition of Corporate Violations and Its Implications.” Business and Human Rights Journal https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/expert-commentaries-on-jul-2019-revised-draft-of-proposed-treaty-on-business-human-rights. Accessed 13 August 2019.

  • Cepek, Michael. 2018. Life in Oil: Cofán Survival in the Petroleum Fields of Amazonia. Austin: University of Texas Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Chang, Ha Joon. 2002. Kicking away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective. London: Anthem Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Charnovitz, Steve. 1987. “Two Centuries of Participation: NGOs and International Governance.” Michigan Journal of International Law 18: 2. Available at https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjil/vol18/iss2/1.

  • Center for Media and Democracy. 2020. “World Wildlife Fund (WWF).” https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/WWF. Accessed 27 July 2020.

  • Commission on Global Governance. 1995. “Our Global Neighbourhood.” https://www.gdrc.org/u-gov/global-neighbourhood/. Accessed 19 August 2020.

  • Conca, Ken. 2012. “The Rise of the Region in Global Environmental Politics.” Global Environmental Politics 12 (3): 127–133.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Conca, Ken. 2015. An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance. Oxford Scholarship on line.

    Google Scholar 

  • Connolly, Nicholas, and Manette Kaisershot. 2015. “Corporate Power and Human Rights.” International Journal of Human Rights 19 (6): 663–672.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dean, Mitchell. 1999. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derian, Der, Shapiro James, and J. Michael, eds. 1989. International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deva, Surya, and David Bilchitz. 2013. Human Rights Obligations of Business: Beyond Corporate Responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Escobar, Arturo. 2014. “Escobar’s Response.” Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology 58 (2): 97–104.

    Google Scholar 

  • Etchart, Linda. 2018. “Chevron, Ecuador and the Extractor’s Curse.” Parts 1–3. London: Latin American Bureau, September.

    Google Scholar 

  • Etchart, Linda, and Cerda, Leo. 2020. “Amazonians in New York: Indigenous Peoples and Global Governance.” City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory and Action 24 (1–2): 5–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2020.1739440. Accessed 18 May 2020.

  • Ferguson, James. 1990. The Anti-politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferguson, Yale F. 2012. “NGOs’ Role in Constructing Global Governance.” Global Governance 18 (3): 383–386.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel. 1997. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954–1984. Vol. 1. New York: New Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Global Witness. 2020. “.Defending Tomorrow: The Climate Crisis and Threats Against Land and Environmental Defenders.” www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/defending-tomorrow. Accessed 29 July 2020.

  • Gore, Charles. 2000. “The Rise and Fall of the Washington Consensus as a Paradigm for Developing Countries.” World Development 28 (5): 789–804.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hanegraaff, Marcel, J. Virgauwen, and J. Beyers. 2019. “Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Variation in Nonstate Actor Advocacy over Time in Global Governance.” Governance 33 (1): 287–304.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanegraaff, Marcel, and Arlo Poletti. 2020. “It’s Economic Size, Stupid! How Global Advocacy Mirrors State Power.” Regulation and Governance, January. https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12304.

  • Hill, David. 2013. “Why Ecuador’s President Is Misleading the World on Yasuni-ITT.” Guardian, 15 October.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huissman, Wilfried. 2014. Pandaleaks: The Dark Side of the WWF. Bremen: Nordbook.

    Google Scholar 

  • International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). 2020. “About International Union for the Conservation of Nature.” https://www.iucn.org/about. Accessed 19 August 2020.

  • Jolly, Richard, Emmerij, Louis, and Weiss, Thomas, G. 2005. The Power of UN Ideas: Lessons from the First 60 Years. United Nations Intellectual History Project. New York: CUNY Graduate Center.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahler, Miles. 2009. “Networked Politics Agency, Power, and Governance.” In Networked Politics: Agency, Power and Governance, edited by Miles Kahler, 1–20. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karns, Margaret, Mingst, Karen A., Stiles, and Kendal W. 2015. International Organizations: The Politics and Processes of Global Governance. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keck, Margaret E., and Sikkink, Kathryn. 1998[2014]. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Khan, Mushtaq H. 2006. “Governance and Anti-Corruption Reforms in Developing Countries: Policies, Evidence and Ways Forward.” G-24 Discussion Paper Series, No. 42. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kimerling, Judith. 2006. “Indigenous Peoples and the Oil Frontier in Amazonia: The Case of Ecuador, ChevronTexaco, and Aguinda vs Texaco.” Journal of International Law and Politics 38 (3): 413–664. https://nyujilp.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/38.3-Kimerling.pdf.

  • Klein, Naomi. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koppell, Jonathan G. S. 2005. “Pathologies of Accountability: ICANN and the Challenge of ‘Multiple Accountabilities Disorder.” Public Administration Review 65 (1): 94–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kramarz, Teresa. 2016. “Accountability in Global Environmental Governance: A Meaningful Tool for Action?” Global Environmental Politics 16 (3): 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Langewiesche, William. 2007. “Big Oil: Jungle Law.” Vanity Fair, May.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marquette, Heather. 2004. “The Creeping Politicisation of the World Bank: The Case of Corruption.” Political Studies 52 (3): 413–430.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Melo Cevallos, Mario. 2016. “Sarayaku ante el sistema interamericano de derechos humanos: justicia para el pueblo del Medio Día y su selva viviente.” De Justicia. Documentos 27. Bogota.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell, Ronald B., Andonova, Liliana B., Axelrod, Mark, Balsiger, Jörg, Bernauer, Thomas, Green, Jessica, Hollway, James, Rakhyun, Kim, and Morin, and Jean Frederic. 2020. “What We Know (and Could Know) About International Environmental Agreements.” Global Environmental Politics 20 (1): 103–121. https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00544. Accessed 11 August 2020.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newell, Peter, Daley, Freddie, and Twena, Michelle. 2021. “Changing Our Ways? Behaviour Change and the Climate Crisis.” Cambridge Sustainability Commission on Scaling Behaviour Change. https://www.rapidtransition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Cambridge-Sustainability-Commission-on-Scaling-behaviour-change-report.pdf. Accessed 14 April 2021.

  • Ofrias, Lindsay. 2017a. “Invisible Harms, Invisible Profits: A Theory of the Incentive to Contaminate.” Culture, Theory and Critique 58 (4): 435–456. https://doi.org/10.1080/14735784.2017.1357478.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ofrias, Lindsay. 2017b. “Ecuadoreans Won’t Back Down in Fighting Chevron-Texaco Over Amazon Oil Disaster.” http://upsidedownworld.org/archives/ecuador/ecuadoreans-wont-back-fighting-chevron-texaco-amazon-oil-disaster. Accessed 1 November 2017.

  • Ottery, Christine. 2015 “Has Shell Been Losing Its Friends Lately?” Unearthed, Greenpeace. 18 September. https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2015/09/18/comment-shell-has-been-losing-its-friends. Accessed 8 April 2021.

  • Pratt, John W., and Richard Zeckhauser, eds. 1991. Principals and Agents: The Structure of Business. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rodrik, Dani. 2006. “Goodbye Washington Consensus, Hello Washington Confusion? A Review of the World Bank’s Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform.” Journal of Economic Literature 44 (4): 973–987.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenau, James. 2020. “The Governance of Fragmegration: Neither a World Republic nor a Global Interstate System.” Studia Diplomatica 53 (5): 15–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sawyer, Suzana, and Gómez, Edmund Terence. 2008. “Transnational Governmentality and Resource Extraction Indigenous Peoples, Multinational Corporations, Multilateral Institutions and the State.” United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) Identities, Conflict and Cohesion Programme Paper. No 13, September.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sawyer, Suzana, and Edmund Terence Gomez. 2012. Transnational Governmentality in the Context of Resource Extraction. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwab, Tim. 2020. “Saint Bill? An Exclusive Look at How the Gates Foundation’s Charity Begins—And Often Ends—At Home.” The Nation, 30 March.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, James. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland. Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shaw, Martin. 2000. “Intimations of Globality: Hamlet Without the Prince”. In Theory of the Global State: Globality as Unfinished Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sikkink, Kathryn. 2011. “The Power of Networks in International Politics.” In Networked Politics Agency, Power, and Governance, edited by Miles Kahler, 228–247. Series: Cornell Studies in Political Economy. Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stiglitz, James. 2002. Globalization and Its Discontents. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tarascio, Giacomo. 2018. “The Complex Convergence: Gramsci and Foucault.” International Gramsci Journal 3 (1): 94–103.

    Google Scholar 

  • United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). 2020. “Division of Environmental Conventions. Multilateral Environmental Agreements.” https://unep.ch/conventions/geclist.htm. Accessed 19 August 2020.

  • United Nations Global Compact. 2021. “The World’s Largest Corporate Sustainability Initiative.” Global Compact. https://www.unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc. Accessed 28 March 2021.

  • United Nations Guiding Principles. 2008. https://www.ohchr.org/documents/publications/guidingprinciplesbusinesshr_en.pdf. Accessed 19 August 2020.

  • United Nations InfoMEA. 2020. “Access Information on Multilateral Environmental Agreements.” https://www.informea.org/en. Accessed 19 August 2020.

  • Vidal, Jon. 2014. “World Bank Accuses Itself of Failing to Protect Kenya Forest Dwellers.” Guardian, 29 September. www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/sep/29/world-bank-kenya-forest-dwellers. Accessed 13 July 2020.

  • Wallace, Tina, and Fenella Porter, eds. 2013. Aid, NGOs and the Realities of Women’s Lives: A perfect storm. Rugby: Practical Action Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weiss, Thomas G., and Ramesh Thakur. 2010. Global Governance and the UN: An Unfinished Journey. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wenar, Leif. 2016. Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • World Bank. 2020. “Environment.” https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/environment. Accessed 19 August 2020.

  • World Commission on Environment and Development. 1987. “Brundtland Report: Our Common Future.” https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/5987our-common-future.pdf. Accessed 13 July 2020.

  • World Wildlife Fund (WWF). 2020. “The Coca Cola Company and the WWF: The Power of Partnerships.” https://www.worldwildlife.org/partnerships/coca-cola. Accessed 27 July 2020.

  • World Wildlife Fund (WWF). 2021. Annual Report. https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/2020-annual-report. Accessed 28 September 2021.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and the Environment, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing, Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, UK

    Linda Etchart

Authors
  1. Linda Etchart
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Linda Etchart .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Etchart, L. (2022). Global Governance of the Environment: Multiple Accountability Disorder?. In: Global Governance of the Environment, Indigenous Peoples and the Rights of Nature. Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81519-6_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation