Summary: Environmental Capacity Building in a Converging World

Abstract

Thirteen countries were examined in the first phase of our research project on capacity building in national environmental policy (see Appendix). The seventeen new country case studies included in the second phase of the project presented in this volume were carried out in accordance with the same conceptual framework. This offered a good opportunity to check our earlier findings against the results of the new case studies and, where necessary, to modify them. For this reason we will largely be addressing the topics dealt with in our summary of the 1997 reader (Jänicke & Weidner, 1997a, b). And, as in our first publication, we concentrate on international and global trends in environmental policy development. While we had then conceded that 13 case studies represented a somewhat narrow basis for any generalizations, the total of 30 country studies now provide a much broader basis for the systematic analysis of general development trends in environmental policy capacities, their forms, causes, and effects. The 17 country studies in the second project phase expand the country sample not only quantitatively: the spectrum of country types is also broadened, and a selection bias in the first group of countries substantially corrected. The 13 countries included almost all early and later environmental policy pioneers, while developing, newly industrializing, and transition countries had largely been disregarded. Nevertheless, the developing countries are still underrepresented in the total sample.