Global Environmental Governance Reconsidered

The notion of global governance is widely studied in academia and increasinglyrelevant to politics and policy making. Yet many of its fundamental elements remain unclear in boththeory and practice. This book offers a fresh perspective by analyzing global governance in terms ofthree major trends, as exemplified by developments in global sustainability governance: theemergence of nonstate actors; new mechanisms of transnational cooperation; and increasinglysegmented and overlapping layers of authority. The book, which is the synthesis of a ten-year"Global Governance Project" carried out by thirteen leading European researchinstitutions, first examines new nonstate actors, focusing on international bureaucracies, globalcorporations, and transnational networks of scientists; then investigates novel mechanisms of globalgovernance, particularly transnational environmental regimes, public-private partnerships, andmarket-based arrangements; and, finally, looks at fragmentation of authority, both vertically amongsupranational, international, national, and subnational layers, and horizontally among differentparallel rule-making systems. The implications, potential, and realities of global environmentalgovernance are defining questions for our generation. This book distills key insights from the pastand outlines the most important research challenges for the future.