Structures of Environmental Governance

Abstract

Contemporary global governance has continuities with a long tradition of statecraft. Environmental policy activities at these levels are partly directed towards collaborative problem solving, but they are constrained by, and partly serve as a politics of the reaffirmation of, traditional state structures. The structures and dynamics of environmental governance are nonetheless subject to change. The rise to positions of prominence in many governance formats of global civil society organizations represents one such notable innovation. Scientists and scientific bodies play a variety of non-state and intergovernmental roles in these settings. This chapter discusses these developments. It looks first at global environmental governance activities and the contexts of international politics that influence and are influenced by their course and then at the expanding governance roles of scientific actors. A third section introduces the broad framework used in the following three chapters to discuss, respectively, the global governance of biodiversity, climate change, and geological hazards.