Abstract
The biosphere consists of three groups of elements: (1) organic (fauna and flora), (2) inorganic (hydrosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere) and (3) an intermediate element (soil). Due to its universal, comprehensive and existential properties, the biosphere requires international cooperation, including global governance, therefore, Biogovernance is to a large extent a component of global governance. Global Biogovernance is debordered because it ignores national boundaries and is plural and fragmented as it does not have a single center of power and functional competences used within it are distributed among many state-actors and non-state actors. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the constitutive features and mechanisms of global Biogovernance contributing to the elimination or reduction of cases of unsustainable development. The theoretical basis for the analysis will be intergovernmentalism and supranationalism with attempt to create a bridge between both approaches.
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Notes
- 1.
Biopolitics is a set of mechanisms, techniques, ways of influencing and shaping the population – in its global and individual dimension – and the surrounding biosphere (Filipowicz & Trejnis, 2015). This is a Foucauldian understanding of biopolitics.
- 2.
Biopower in the narrow sense is the authority and, at the same time, the ability to influence the social environment (people and their lives), institutions (and their lives), the natural environment (and its life), etc., and to decide on these entities while retaining the right to sanctions, pressure and persuasion, and with the use of biological tools and regimes in economics or politics (e.g. policy towards the elderly, emission reduction systems, legal restrictiveness in the protection of species, etc.). Biological and political power enters the biological sphere and wants to regulate biological processes that affect political, social and economic processes.
- 3.
A. Moravcsik placed his liberal intergovernmentalism within the framework of liberal institutionalism, in which representatives of the Member States enjoy a high level of indirect legitimacy in the international arena, while at the same time being accountable to national constitutional institutions. Supranational institutions and non-governmental actors with their amorphous understanding of accountability did not show such features. LIG devoted a lot of space to faith in the ability of national governments to legitimize the decision-making process “outside the state” (e.g. in the European Union).
- 4.
GEM also includes a production system that is based on biophysical or biochemical life sciences processes and associated genetic technologies. The GEM model is closely related to the concept of a sustainable and competitive circular economy (The European Environment. State and Outlook, 2010).
- 5.
The authors of this work explain the concept of governance as deliberate actions of any community that maintain the mechanisms to ensure its security, prosperity, cohesion, stabilization and continuity.
- 6.
Of course, this by no means excludes decisions made on one level (horizontal).
- 7.
Inside the biogovernance system, on one hand, a specific conglomerate of governance levels can be observed, but on the other, a set of vertical processes occurring between these levels and on these (horizontal) levels, as well as a set of state and non-state actors operating at these levels.
- 8.
A variant of elite governance is the involvement of experts, analysts, scientists, etc., who by creating epistemic communities influence power through their scientific studies, expert opinions, specialist reports, etc. Deliberation between these communities not only has an epistemic value, thanks to which knowledge and information base grows, but also has a transformational value, i.e. serving changes (Oddvar Eriksen & Fossum, 2005; Harlow, 1999).
- 9.
The aim of the UNSECOMED, located in Castellet Castle near Barcelona, is to promote and strengthen international cooperation in the field of research, joint training and knowledge transfer between Mediterranean biosphere reserves. Promoting sustainable development and strengthening its technical capabilities should help govern the biosphere.
- 10.
Category 2 Centresare bodies run by UNESCO, while Category 1 Centres are national bodies run by states and cooperating with UNESCO. It is a classification that proves multi-level biogovernance.
- 11.
The next step was the Declaration on Cities and Biodiversity adopted at the second CBD meeting in Curitiba in 2007.
- 12.
UNESCO has a total of 727 biosphere reserves and national parks located in 131 countries. uenscomedcenter.org
- 13.
The convention entered into force in 1994.
- 14.
The end of the ratification process of the Protocol did not take place until 2005.
- 15.
However, the key roles in carbon dioxide emissions are played by the USA and China (in 2006, these countries accounted for a total of 41.8% of global emissions), which allows them to be treated in this context as a kind of duumvirate, or even an actual two-part G2 group (Falkner et al., 2010).
- 16.
The Paris Agreement became part of international law on November 4, 2016, after the ratification process was completed by the signatories. The Paris Climate Summit was in fact the 21st Annual Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
- 17.
The first report was published in 1990.
- 18.
The strategy is a continuation of the previous version of this document adopted in 2010, planned until 2020, based on the action plan for biodiversity launched in 2006 and reflecting the global goals of halting biodiversity loss in the Nagoya World Agenda.
- 19.
Detailed actions and tools are to help achieve the goals of the strategy.
- 20.
It provided for, inter alia, intensification of activities aimed at limiting pollutant emissions, in line with the Lisbon Strategy.
- 21.
For example, established in 1991, the LIFE program (L’Instrument Financier pour Environment) financially supports activities aimed at the protection of endangered species and initiates and dynamizes the activities of project teams aimed at supporting biodiversity.
- 22.
NATURA 2000 areas constitute the largest network of protected areas in the world with 26,000 areas of this type and are considered key to the EU’s biodiversity policy (Directive 43/1992 of 21.5.1992.).
- 23.
The first EPER report was released in 2004.
- 24.
The USA has a similar register to the EU’s EPER it is TRI (Toxic Release Inventory).
- 25.
An example of such a common tool included in the MoU may be integrated governance of oceans A (10), or integrated maritime policy C (20) (Memorandum of Understanding 2012).
- 26.
An example is the CoastWAVE Project, launched on September 1, 2021, aimed at strengthening the resilience of coastal areas in parts of the North-East Atlantic and the Mediterranean basin to Tsunami attacks and other coastal threats. The project is financed by the ECHO (European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operation), which is an EU agency. In turn, in 2016–2020, the European Commission joined the financing of the Central Africa World Heritage Forest Initiative (CAWHFI), primarily supporting landscape monitoring systems and equipment used to protect biodiversity.
- 27.
The CITES Convention was adopted in 1973 to protect wild populations of endangered species of animals and plants by controlling, monitoring and limiting international trade in them, their recognizable parts and their derivatives. Currently 183 countries are parties to the convention.
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Ruszkowski, J. (2023). Global Biogovernance: Between Intergovernmental and Supranational Cooperation. In: Tripathi, S., Bhadouria, R., Singh, R., Srivastava, P., Devi, R.S. (eds) Eco-Politics and Global Climate Change. Environment & Policy, vol 65. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48098-0_2
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