'Transnational Environmental Governance provides both an excellent overview of the issues to be taken into account in studying voluntary certification systems, and an effective in-depth study of the forestry and fishing cases. . . highly effective as a treatment of environmental certification, and as a starting point for the study of the phenomenon.' – J. Samuel Barkin, Global Environmental Politics 'This is a well-written and accessible book, offering a nuanced analysis of the emergence, organisation, and effectiveness of certification programs in forests and fisheries. This book is recommended to practitioners, students, and researchers interested in certification of forests and fisheries. I think it could also be useful to those with a general interest in environmental governance, as it offers valuable lessons from this empirical analysis of two of the most advances cases of (allegedly) nonstate governance.' – Erik Hysing, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 'This book provides a timely contribution to both academic and policy debates by examining the processes and mechanisms of the emergence and proliferation of non-state governance schemes, specifically comparing forest and fisheries certification. The empirical evidence challenges conventional wisdom by showing that political and public regulatory frameworks are essential in the implementation of certification programs. This is highly recommended reading when discussing to what extent – and how – non-state transnational governance schemes can solve the problems they were intended for.' – Katarina Eckerberg, Umeå University, Sweden 'Transnational Environmental Governance provides a comprehensive and insightful analysis of the emergence and effects of certification schemes as novel mechanisms of environmental policy-making beyond traditional intergovernmental cooperation. Gulbrandsen's multi-level study will be highly useful for scholars, practitioners and graduate students who seek to advance their understanding of private rulemaking at both national and global levels. The book is highly recommended.' – Frank Biermann, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 'A comprehensive and highly informative analysis of two of the most important examples of non-state governance mechanisms that have emerged to address the shortcomings of government environmental regulation. This book's theoretical framework and detailed case-studies represent an important contribution to our understanding of the accomplishments and limitations of certification programs to advance corporate social responsibility.' – David Vogel, University of California, Berkeley, US 'Incisive and nuanced, Transnational Environmental Governance significantly advances our understanding of the capacity of certification to influence the environmental behaviour of corporations and consumers. Lars Gulbrandsen's subtle analysis leaves us with an innovative toolbox to explain when and why voluntary certification programs succeed – or fail – to strengthen environmental governance. It is essential reading for anyone wanting a more accurate way to evaluate the growing number of non-state certification programs.' – Peter Dauvergne, University of British Columbia, Canada In recent years a wide range of non-state certification programs have emerged to address environmental and social problems associated with the extraction of natural resources. This book provides a general analytical framework for assessing the emergence and effectiveness of voluntary certification programs. It focuses on certification in the forest and fisheries sectors, as initiatives in these sectors are among the most advanced cases of non-state standard setting and governance in the environmental realm. Paying particular attention to the Forest Stewardship Council and the Marine Stewardship Council, the author examines how certification initiatives emerged, the politics that underlie their development, their ability to influence producer and consumer behavior, and the broader consequences of their formation and spread. The analysis of the certification of forests and fisheries offers a wealth of insights from which to better understand the capacity of non-state governance programs to ameliorate global environmental problems. Containing a detailed review of the direct effects and broader consequences of forest and fisheries certification, this book will be warmly welcomed by scholars of environmental politics and corporate social responsibility, as well as practitioners involved in non-state certification programs throughout the world.

Leading experts provide the first comprehensive account of transnational efforts to respond to climate change, for researchers, graduate students and policy makers.

Theoretical and empirical accounts of the role of business in shaping international environmental policies.

Provides a comparative study of the role of international organizations in environmental governance and features case studies on the World Bank; OECD; the UN Environment Programme and secretariats to environmental treaties; and hybrid organizations.

Yet many of its fundamental elements remain unclear in both theory and practice.

Today's most pressing environmental problems are planetary in scope, confounding the political will of any one nation. How can we solve them? Global Environmental Governance offers the essential information, theory, and practical insight needed to tackle this critical challenge. It examines ten major environmental threats-climate disruption, biodiversity loss, acid rain, ozone depletion, deforestation, desertification, freshwater degradation and shortages, marine fisheries decline, toxic pollutants, and excess nitrogen-and explores how they can be addressed through treaties, governance regimes, and new forms of international cooperation. Written by Gus Speth, one of the architects of the international environmental movement, and accomplished political scientist Peter M. Haas, Global Environmental Governance tells the story of how the community of nations, nongovernmental organizations, scientists, and multinational corporations have in recent decades created an unprecedented set of laws and institutions intended to help solve large-scale environmental problems. The book critically examines the serious shortcomings of current efforts and the underlying reasons why disturbing trends persist. It presents key concepts in international law and regime formation in simple, accessible language, and describes the current institutional landscape as well as lessons learned and new directions needed in international governance. Global Environmental Governance is a concise guide, with lists of key terms, study questions, and other features designed to help readers think about and understand the concepts discussed.

Globalization today is as much a problem for international harmony as it is a necessary condition of living together on our planet. Increasing interconnectedness in ecology, economy, technology, and politics has brought nations and societies into even closer contact, creating acute demands for cooperation. Earthly Politics argues that in the coming decades global governance will have to accommodate differences even as it obliterates distance, and will have to respect many aspects of the local while developing institutions that transcend localism. This book analyzes a variety of environmental-governance approaches that balance the local and the global in order to encourage new, more flexible frameworks of global governance. On the theoretical level, it draws on insights from the field of science and technology studies to enrich our understanding of environmental-development politics. On the pragmatic level, it discusses the design of institutions and processes to address problems of environmental governance that increasingly refuse to remain within national boundaries. The cases in the book display the crucial relationship between knowledge and power—the links between the ways we understand environmental problems and the ways we manage them—and illustrate the different paths by which knowledge-power formations are arrived at, contested, defended, or set aside. By examining how local and global actors ranging from the World Bank to the Makah tribe in the Pacific Northwest respond to the contradictions of globalization, the authors identify some of the conditions for creating more effective engagement between the global and the local in environmental governance.

In the past few years, numerous authors have highlighted the emergence of transnational climate initiatives, such as city networks, private certification schemes, and business self-regulation in the policy domain of climate change. While these transnational governance arrangements can surely contribute to solving the problem of climate change, their development by different types of sub- and non-state actors does not imply a weakening of the intergovernmental level. On the contrary, many transnational climate initiatives use the international climate regime as a point of reference and have adopted various rules and procedures from international agreements. Rethinking Authority in Global Climate Governance puts forward this argument and expands upon it, using case studies which suggest that the effective operation of transnational climate initiatives strongly relies on the existence of an international regulatory framework created by nation-states. Thus, this book emphasizes the centrality of the intergovernmental process clustered around the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and underscores that multilateral treaty-making continues to be more important than many scholars and policy-makers suppose. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of global environmental politics, climate change and sustainable development.

Aligning global governance to the challenges of sustainability is one of the most urgent environmental issues to be addressed. This book is a timely and up-to-date compilation of the main pieces of the global environmental governance puzzle. The book is comprised of 101 entries, each defining a central concept in global environmental governance, presenting its historical evolution, introducing related debates and including key bibliographical references and further reading. The entries combine analytical rigour with empirical description. The book: offers cutting edge analysis of the state of global environmental governance, raises an up-to-date debate on global governance for sustainable development, gives an in-depth exploration of current international architecture of global environmental governance, examines the interaction between environmental politics and other fields of governance such as trade, development and security, elaborates a critical review of the recent literature in global environmental governance. This unique work synthesizes writing from an internationally diverse range of well-known experts in the field of global environmental governance. Innovative thinking and high-profile expertise come together to create a volume that is accessible to students, scholars and practitioners alike.

More than twenty years after the Bruntland Commission report, Our Common Future, we have yet to secure the basis for a serious approach to global environmental governance. The failed 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development showed the need for a new approach to globalization and sustainability. Taking a critical perspective, rooted in political economy, regulation theory, and post-sovereign international relations, this book explores questions concerning the governance of environmental sustainability in a globalizing economy. With contributions from leading international scholars, the book offers a comprehensive framework on globalization, governance, and sustainability, and examines institutional mechanisms and arrangements to achieve sustainable environmental governance. It: considers current failures in the framework of global environmental governance addresses the problematic relationship between sustainability and globalization explores controversies of development and environment that have led to new processes of institution building examines the marketization of environmental policy-making; stakeholder politics and environmental policy-making; socio-economic justice; the political origins of sustainable consumption; the role of transnational actors; and processes of multi-level global governance. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of political science, international studies, political economy and environmental studies.