Negotiating Environmental Agreements provides the first comprehensive introduction to their widely practiced and highly regarded techniques."--BOOK JACKET.

"International environmental agreements have increased exponentially within the last five decades. However, decisions on policies to address key issues such as biodiversity loss, climate change, ozone depletion, hazardous waste transport, and numerous other planetary challenges require individual countries to adhere to international norms. Environmental Diplomacy: Negotiating More Effective Global Agreements provides an accessible narrative on understanding the geopolitics of negotiating international environmental agreements and clear guidance on improving the current system. Authors Lawrence Susskind and Saleem Ali expertly observe international environmental negotiations to effectively inform the reader on the geopolitics of protecting our planet. This second edition offers an additional perspective from the Global South as well as providing a broader analysis of the role of science in environmental treaty-making. It provides a unique contribution as a panoramic analysis of the process of environmental treaty-making"--Unedited summary from book cover.

Earth Negotiations develops a phased-process model that can enable greater understanding of the process by which international environmental agreements are negotiated. By breaking down the negotiating process into a series of phases and turning points, it is easier to analyze the roles of the different actors, the management of issues, the formation of groups and coalitions, and the art of consensus building. Six discernible phases and five associated turning points within the process of multilateral environmental negotiation are identified and explained. The model is then used to see if there is anything that occurs in the earlier phases of negotiation that affects subsequent phases and if there is anything in the process that may have an effect on the outcome. The overall goal is to determine what lessons can be learned from past cases of multilateral environmental negotiation in order to help both practitioners and scholars strengthen the negotiating process and the quality of its results.

Tolba tells the story of the negotiations that led to a number of landmark agreements, such as the Vienna Convention on Ozone and its Montreal Protocol, the Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes, and the Biodiversity Convention.

Civil society participants have voiced concerns that the environmental problems that were the subject of multilateral environmental agreements negotiated during the 1992 Rio processes are not serving to ameliorate global environmental problems. These concerns raise significant questions regarding the utility of negotiating agreements through the UN. This book elucidates the complexity of how participants engage in these negotiations through the various processes that take place under the auspices of the UN—primarily those related to climate and biological diversity. By taking an ethnographic approach and providing concrete examples of how it is that civil society participants engage in making policy, this book develops a robust sense of the implications of the current terrain of policy-making—both for the environment, and for the continued participation of non-state actors in multilateral environmental governance. Using data gathered at actual negotiations, the book develops concepts such as participation and governance beyond theory. The research uses participant observation ethnographic methods to tie the theoretical frameworks to people’s actual activities as policy is generated and contested. Whereas topics associated with global environmental governance are traditionally addressed in fields such as international relations and political science, this book contributes to developing a richer understanding of the theories using a sociological framework, tying individual activities into larger social relations and shedding light on critical questions associated with transnational civil society and global politics.

The 2015 Paris Agreement represents the culmination of years of intense negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Designed to curb climate change, it was negotiated by almost 200 countries who came to the table with different backgrounds, perceptions and interests. As such, the Agreement represents a triumph for multilateralism in a period otherwise characterized by nationalist turns. How did countries reach the historical agreement, and what were the driving forces behind it? This book paints a full picture by providing and analysing multifaceted insider accounts from high-level delegates who represented developed and developing countries, civil society, businesses, the French Presidency, and the UNFCCC Secretariat. In doing so, the book documents not only the negotiation of the Paris Agreement but also the dynamics and factors that shaped it. A better understanding of these dynamics and factors can guide future negotiations and help us solve global challenges.

At the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, popularly known as the Rio Earth Summit, the world’s leaders constructed a new "sustainable development" paradigm that promised to enhance environmentally sound economic and social development. Twenty years later, the proliferation of multilateral environmental agreements points to an unprecedented achievement, but is worth examining for its accomplishments and shortcomings. This book provides a review of twenty years of multilateral environmental negotiations (1992-2012). The authors have participated in most of these negotiating processes and use their first-hand knowledge as writers for the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin as they illustrate the changes that have taken place over the past twenty years. The chapters examine the proliferation of meetings, the changes in the actors and their roles (governments, nongovernmental organizations, secretariats), the interlinkages of issues, the impact of scientific advice, and the challenges of implementation across negotiating processes, including the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention to Combat Desertification, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Commission on Sustainable Development, the UN Forum on Forests, the chemicals conventions (Stockholm, Basel and Rotterdam), the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the Convention on Migratory Species and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

A tool to help negotiators of Multilateral Environmental Agreements to prepare strategies and to participate more effectively in the negotiations and focus on environmental issues, their creation of binding international law, and their inclusion.

This book examines how an error in global meta-policy set climate change negotiations on an unproductive course. The decision to base negotiations on the Montreal Protocol and overlook the importance of interests, it argues, institutionalised an approach doomed to fail. By analysing interests, science and norms in the process, and the neglect of ‘interactive minilateralism’, learning was delayed until the more promising Paris Agreement was finally concluded, only to encounter a Trump Presidency, which (ironically) might offer further learning opportunities.

Voluntary environmental agreements (VEAs) – generally agreements between government and business – have been regarded by many as a key new instrument for meeting environmental objectives in a flexible manner. Their performance to date has, however, also led to considerable criticism, with several parties arguing that they are methods for avoiding real action that goes beyond "business-as-usual". Is either of these positions justified? The aim of this book is to highlight and learn the lessons from existing experience, looking not just at results but also at specific elements of agreements and also at the process of the agreement itself. Lessons are drawn from experience from across the world, covering the full range of environmental challenges, and from the perspective of key stakeholder groups. Importantly, the book also presents tools for assessing and improving existing agreements and includes recommendations and guidelines for future agreements in key areas such as climate change. It also deals at length with the problem of how such agreements might be used in developing and transitional economies. The overall view of the book is that there is a real potential for the future use of VEAs as part of the policy mix and as a tool for sharing the responsibility for meeting environmental objectives. For the agreements to play this role, however, significant steps are needed to ensure that they are effective, efficient, equitable and appropriately linked to a portfolio of other instruments. The book is divided into four sections. First, existing agreements, their development and efficacy are considered; second, the prospects for voluntary agreements in developing and transitional economies are discussed; third, a range of authors examine the role of VEAs as part of the policy mix to combat climate change; and, finally, the book concludes with an examination of how new tools for evaluating and improving VEAs could be utilized in the future. Voluntary Environmental Agreements will be of interest not only to academics, governments and businesses wishing to understand this specific instrument, but also to those already implementing or considering applying VEAs to meet their environmental objectives.