Making International

Environmental Efforts Work:

The Case for a Global
Environmental Organization

BY DANIEL C. ESTY AND MARIA H. IVANOVA

Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy

PREPARED FOR PRESENTATION AT THE OPEN MEETING OF THE GLOBAL

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE RESEARCH COMMUNITY
RIO DE JANEIRO, OCTOBER 6-8, 2001

1
Daniel C. Esty is a professor of environmental law and policy at the Yale Law School
and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. He is also Director of the
Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and Associate Dean of the Yale School of
Forestry & Environmental Studies (http://www.yale.edu/environment).
E-mail: daniel.esty@yale.edu

Maria H. Ivanova is the Director of the Global Environmental Governance Project

(http://www.yale.edu/gegdialogue) and doctoral candidate at the Yale School of Forestry
& Environmental Studies. E-mail: maria.ivanova@yale.edu

Established in 1994, the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy draws on
resources throughout Yale University to develop and advance environmental policy
locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. One core goal is to develop and advance
policies responding to critical environmental problems and to provide a forum in which
scholars, environmental advocates, business people, officials, and representatives of
international organizations can exchange views.

2001 Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy

301 Prospect Street
New Haven CT 06511
United States
(203) 787 - 1414
(203) 432 - 3817
http://www.yale.edu/envirocenter

2
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................4

2. RATIONALE FOR A GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATION........................5

2.1 THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS OF THE 21ST CENTURY................................................5
2.2 THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE SYSTEM...................................................6
2.2.1. Failed Collective Action..............................................................................................6
2.2.2 Fragmentation..............................................................................................................7
2.2.3 Deficient Authority........................................................................................................8
2.2.4 Insufficient Legitimacy..................................................................................................9
2.2.5 Fiddling or fixing........................................................................................................10
3. FUNCTIONS AND FEATURES OF A GEO.......................................................................10
3.1 DECISION-MAKING..............................................................................................................11
3.2 IMPLEMENTATION...............................................................................................................11
3.3 MONITORING.......................................................................................................................12
3.4 CONFLICT RESOLUTION......................................................................................................12
3.5 FEATURES OF A GEO..........................................................................................................12
4. WHAT’S IN A NAME?..........................................................................................................13

5. ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN.............................................................................................13

6. BENEFITS OF A GEO..........................................................................................................15
6.1 IMPROVED COLLECTIVE ACTION.......................................................................................15
6.2 IMPROVED PROBLEM SOLVING..........................................................................................16
6.3 IMPROVED LEGITIMACY.....................................................................................................17
6.4 STRENGTHENED POLICY SPACE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT...............................................17
6.5 IMPROVED FAIRNESS...........................................................................................................17
7. IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES..................................................................................18

8. CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................................19

9. REFERENCES.......................................................................................................................20

3
 Making International Environmental Efforts Work:
The Case for a Global Environmental Organization

BY DANIEL C. ESTY AND MARIA H. IVANOVA

1. Introduction

Poor performance in response to mounting global scale pollution and natural resource
management challenges has spurred interest in rethinking global environmental
governance and perhaps restructuring the current institutional architecture. Both former
Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev and French President Jacques Chirac have
urged the establishment of a Global Environmental Organization.1 While more modest
reform agendas, building on the status quo, might also be considered, the nature of the
environmental problems at the global level and the inherent shortcomings of the existing
structure argue strongly for a broader reconfiguration of the international environmental
regime.
Significant natural resources, from the ocean bed to the atmosphere, are shared regionally
or globally. Yet, despite the multitude of treaties, conventions, and agencies, the current
global environmental management system has failed to address and solve problems
related to transboundary pollution spillovers and shared resources. A revitalized and
strengthened policy mechanism and structure is needed to respond to the scale and
complexity of the problems and to the changing context within which they have to be
tackled. To this end, options for a new, flexible, and innovative approach to addressing
global environmental problems need to be developed. The world community would
benefit from the presence of an authoritative environmental voice in the international
arena and a recognized forum for national officials and other stakeholders to work
cooperatively to address global issues.
In this paper, we advance the case for a Global Environmental Organization (GEO). Our
proposal for a GEO builds on a careful analysis of the problems that must be addressed
internationally and the key capacities that an international environmental body should
possess. We outline a possible organizational structure, sketch out an implementation
strategy, and address some of the arguments likely to be raised against creating a GEO.

1
“The American and Russian People Don’t Want a New Confrontation,” Newsweek April 27, 2001 full text
available at http://www.msnbc.com/news/565665.asp#BODY; “Jacques Chirac s’empare de l’ecologie,” Le
Monde, 5 May 2001, p.6, text available at http://www.lemonde.fr. Similar suggestions have also come from
French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, former World Trade Organization director general Renato Ruggiero,
Britain’s Sir Leon Brittan, a growing number of business leaders (especially those with global operations)
and even The Economist magazine. An increasing volume of literature has begun to accumulate. For the
rationale of a global environmental body, see Biermann and Simonis 1998; Biermann 2000, 2001; Esty
1994, 2000, 2000a; Newell 2001; Whalley and Zissimos 2001. For a critique of the concept of a Global
Environmental Organization, see Juma 2000, 2000a, von Moltke 2001. The inaugural issue of Global
Environmental Politics journal (2001) is largely dedicated to the global environmental governance debate.

4
2. Rationale for a Global Environmental Organization

2.1 The Environmental Problems of the 21st Century

From thinning of the ozone layer to depleted fisheries to the possibility of climate
change, the world community faces today a number of inherently global challenges.
Advances in a range of ecological sciences continue to unveil new threats to the “global
commons” that deserve attention – from airborne mercury to disrupted hydrological
systems – as well as new inter-relationships among issues, such as the impact of excess
nitrogen from fertilizers or vehicle emissions on terrestrial and marine ecosystems.2
Ecological interdependence is a fact.3 The only question is whether we will manage it
thoughtfully, explicitly, and effectively or on an unsystematic and ad hoc basis.
Clearly, some environmental problems are of limited geographic scope and can be
handled at the national scale. But governments around the world are beginning to
recognize their inability to address the many environmental problems with international
implications on their own. Thus, stronger national, state/regional and local
environmental performance is necessary, but cannot substitute for appropriate action at
the global scale.
And the problem is not just environmental. Basic economics teaches that unregulated
shared resources are at risk of overexploitation. Fish stocks, for instance, can be run
down quickly if every fisherman tries to catch as many fish as possible as quickly as
possible. Similarly, transboundary spillovers of pollution (such as SO2 emissions drifting
downwind and causing acid rain or contamination of shared rivers, such as the Danube)
cannot be adequately addressed at the national scale. If not controlled, such
“uninternalized externalities”4 lead to “market failures” and result in allocative
inefficiency in the economic realm, reduced gains from trade, and lost social welfare, not
to mention environmental degradation.
As the longstanding literature on “public goods” makes clear,5 collective action to
address externalities must be at the scale on which the harms arise. Thus, some sort of
functioning global environmental regime becomes an economic as well as an ecological
necessity. Because environmental problems are diverse and arise at different scales, a
governance structure must similarly be multi-tier in structure. What is therefore needed
2
WRI 1998-1999.
3
As emphasized by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, “No crisis in history has so clearly demonstrated
the interdependence of nations as the environmental crisis.” UNEP 2000.
4
The concept of an externality was first elaborated by Arthur Pigou in 1912 when he analyzed how a
factory would produce more than the optimal amount of smoke because of a divergence between private
and social costs. Pigou expanded on this discussion in his The Economics of Welfare ([1920]1962).
Ronald Coase (1960) enriched and corrected the Pigouvian framework by pointing out that in a world of
well-defined property rights and zero transaction costs exchange will eliminate externalities and ensure that
resources are allocated to their highest valued use.
5
See Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (1965).

5
is a “nesting” of institutions6 – a framework of local, regional, national, and international
policy mechanisms for a comprehensive, effective and integrated approach to
environmental governance.

2.2 The Global Environmental Governance System

It is now widely acknowledged that the current international environmental regime is

performing poorly.7 From halting efforts to understand and confront the prospect of
climate change to pressing issues of food safety, dissatisfaction among politicians,
business people, environmentalists, and the general public abounds. Some of the failings
can be attributed to a history of management shortcomings and bureaucratic
entanglements, but other aspects of the problem are deeper and more structural. Four
major issues deserve particular focus:

2.2.1. Failed Collective Action

Environmental regulation at the global level requires an extraordinary degree of
cooperation among nations. In academic lingo, it presents a difficult “collective action”
problem.8 Because international environmental problems are diffuse – spread across
space and time – incentives arise to ignore transboundary emissions and neglect the
management of shared resources. Likewise, the concentration of abatement costs (borne
fully within the country undertaking pollution control programs) and the diffusion of the
benefits (spread across the world) makes free-riding on the efforts of others attractive.
Quite simply, the spatial scale and temporal diffusion of international environmental
issues makes the impacts of externalized harms hard to see – and thus the benefits of
cooperation less than obvious. As a fundamental matter, unless countries perceive
problems as real and thus recognize the advantages of collaboration, the transaction costs
of organizing and sustaining international cooperation become overwhelming.
The fragmentation, gaps in issue coverage, and even contradictions among different
treaties, organizations, and agencies with environmental responsibilities make
international environmental policy coherence hard to achieve. A pervasive lack of data,
information, and very limited policy transparency adds to the challenge, making even
agreement on the scope of problems hard to get. This obscurity and confusion heightens
the allure of letting others carry the environmental burden. But, of course, when
everyone chooses to stand on the sidelines, no action is taken.
With limited exceptions (e.g., ozone layer protection), the global environmental scene in
the last decade has involved too much watching and talking and too little effective action.

6
See WHAT 2000.
7
See UNEP 2001; French 2000; Hempel 1996.
8
A collective action problem occurs when rational individual action by each of the members of a group
would lead to a sub-optimal collective outcome. The most notable examples are in natural resource or
global commons use where maximizing individual utility leads to a depletion and ultimate ruin of the
resource. See for example, Hardin 1968, citing the case of a common pasture where adding more cattle is a
rational individual decision but results in the destruction of the shared natural resource and ultimately to
negative economic consequences. The seminal work in collective action theory is Mancur Olson’s “The
Logic of Collective Action: public goods and the theory of groups,” 1971.

6
On most issues, the results from the international environmental regime have fallen short
of both expectations and needs. International coordination, issue identification, policy
analysis, problem solving, and capacity building have been inadequate in many areas,
including climate change, fisheries management, trade and environment, biodiversity,
and desertification.9
The pattern of sub-optimal policy outcomes can be traced to many sources: limited
human and financial resources, bureaucratic inefficiencies, inadequate scientific
underpinnings, and a lack of commitment to analytic rigor in a number of international
bodies. But the core problem is, at least in part, structural. Other global challenges—
international economic management, population control, and various world health
problems (e.g., eradication of polio and small pox) have been addressed more
successfully. In the international environmental domain, success has been achieved in a
small number of cases where case specific institutional mechanisms sufficient to a
particular problem emerged, the costs of the status quo and the benefits of action were
realized, and political entrepreneurship was harnessed to develop effective, efficient, and
innovative policy solutions.10 But the list of successes is short.
In brief, institutions matter. The international environmental architecture has proven
itself incapable of living up to the challenges it faces. Change is required to better
facilitate cooperation in response to global issues.

2.2.2 Fragmentation
International environmental responsibilities are spread across too many institutions with
diffuse, overlapping, and even conflicting mandates.11 Thus, the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) competes for time, attention, and resources with more
than a dozen other UN bodies (such as the Commission for Sustainable Development
(CSD), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the International Oceanographic
Commission (IOC), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) and others) with environmental responsibilities and interests. UNEP, UNDP,
WMO, as well as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
and the World Bank, for example, all have climate change programs underway with little
coordination and no sense of strategic division of labor. In a similar vein, the World
Humanity Action Trust Commission on Water has identified more than twenty bodies
and specialized agencies within the UN system with water programs.12

9
These weaknesses are recognized by UNEP in the Malmö Ministerial Declaration adopted in May 2000,
noting that there is “an increasing rate of deterioration of the environment and the natural resource base,
[and] an alarming discrepancy between commitments and action.” Full text available at
http://www.unep.org
10
The most notable global example is the regime for protection of the ozone layer. There are many
regional examples of successful cooperation, especially within the scope of regional seas conventions. For
an extensive discussion of the various Multilateral Environmental Agreements, see UNEP 2001a,
“Multilateral Environmental Agreements: A Summary, Report of the Executive Director”
(UNEP/IGM/1/INF/1). Full text available at http://www.unep.org/ieg
11
For a discussion of the fragmentation problem by UNEP, see UNEP 2001, “International Environmental
Governance: Report of the Executive Director,” (UNEP/IGM/1/2). Full text available at
http://www.unep.org/ieg
12
WHAT 2000, at 20.

7
Adding to this fragmentation are the independent secretariats to numerous treaties
including the Montreal Protocol (ozone layer protection), the Basel Convention
(hazardous waste trade), the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES), the Climate Change Convention, and many others. In fact, there are now over
500 multilateral environmental treaties, and 60 per cent of them have come into existence
since the Stockholm Conference in 1972.13 Many of these agreements are limited in
scope along issue and geographic areas. As pointed out in the report of UNEP’s
Executive Director on Multilateral Environmental Agreements, “[f]rom a combined
global and regional perspective, the resultant proliferation of MEAs has placed an
increasing burden on Parties and member states to meet their collective obligations and
responsibilities to implement environmental conventions and related international
agreements.”14 When similar “treaty congestion” threatened to break down international
efforts to regulate intellectual property, a single body, the World Intellectual Property
Organization, was launched to consolidate global scale efforts and achieve scale
economies in management. The environmental regime faces a similar pressing need for
streamlining and coherence.

2.2.3 Deficient Authority

The existing international environmental institutions, especially UNEP, are hampered by
narrow or vague mandates, small budgets, and limited political support. No one
organization has the political authority, vitality, expertise, and profile to serve as the
center of gravity for the international environmental regime and to exert sustained
political influence in other global fora.
The contrast with other international regimes is striking. UNEP, set up as a program
rather than as an autonomous agency, lacks the necessary legal authority, budget, and
staff to manage (or even coordinate) global environmental policymaking. 15 More
critically, it has failed to attract and retain a first-rate staff. These weaknesses translate
into poor performance and mean that the UNEP analyses and recommendations often do
not carry much clout. A reputation for authoritativeness might alternatively have been
established if UNEP had positioned itself as a “global public policy network,”16 pulling in
expertise from around the world. But this model was not developed either.
With an annual budget of $60 million,17 UNEP limps from one fiscal crisis to the next.
The funding mechanism of “voluntary contributions” as opposed to “assessed
contributions” leaves the organization vulnerable to the demands donors attach to
financing. And the limited resources available have often been spread too thin. While set
up as a mechanism for tackling global environmental issues, UNEP has been pushed to
13
UNEP 2001a, at 2.
14
Ibid. at 3.
15
For an extensive review and analysis of UNEP’s role in global environmental governance and an
assessment of past and present reform initiatives, see Desai 2000. For an assessment of UNEP’s strengths
and weaknesses as regards global environmental governance, see UNEP 2001.
16
For an analysis and review of the Global Public Policy Networks concept, see infra notes 25-25 and
accompanying text.
17
$60 million constitutes the approved appropriations by UNEP’s Governing Council for 2001; the actual
contributions are expected to amount to less than $50 million. For more information on trends in financing
from 1994 to 2003, see Desai 2000, at 474.

8
take on project responsibilities that it has neither the budget nor the structure to manage.
Furthermore, political instability, serious personal safety issues, and a lack of a modern
communications infrastructure in Nairobi have hampered progress.
The international environmental regime has thus become mired in a cycle of decline.
UNEP’s structural handicaps have led to its output being judged as modest and not very
useful. This weak performance results in reduced political support, greater difficulty in
attracting highly competent staff, and continuous budget problems as donors look
elsewhere for ways to deploy their limited environmental resources. Results further
deteriorate, and the downward spiral accelerates.

2.2.4 Insufficient Legitimacy

The existing international environmental regime has failed to adequately deal with the
priorities of both developed and developing countries. As a result, there is little
commitment across the world community to the success of the global environmental
regime – and little sense of the importance or legitimacy lodged in the institutions that
make up this regime. The Commission on Sustainable Development, set up to address
economic, social, and environmental objectives in an integrated manner, has failed to
galvanize the world community in support of sustainable development. It has not even
succeeded in clarifying what the term means much less how it should be translated into a
concrete action agenda.18
Inattention on the part of industrialized countries to the need for a concerted worldwide
effort to alleviate poverty has had significant spillovers into other issue areas. In many
countries, there is a sense that the Rio Earth Summit compact – a simultaneous focus on
the development needs of poorer countries and the environmental goals of wealthier
nations – has not been kept.19 The North’s limited initiatives to help to build
environmental capacities in developing countries through financial and technological
transfers has added to the sense of disillusionment with the current global environmental
regime and its structures. While the United States, the EU, and Japan reject the charge
that they failed to follow through on commitments made at Rio, the lack of progress on
the international environmental policy front is palpable.
The inadequacy and dispersion of the existing financial mechanisms – scattered across
the Global Environmental Facility, UN Development Programme, World Bank, and
separate funds such as the Montreal Protocol Finance Mechanism – reinforces the
perception of a lack of seriousness in the North about the plight of the South.

18
This problem was articulated most recently by Nitin Desai, Under-Secretary-General for economic and
social affairs, at the organizational session of the Commission on Sustainable Development acting as a
Preparatory Committee for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, April 30 – May 2, 2001, New
York.
19
See the discussion paper by the South African NGO Caucus on the World Summit for Sustainable
Development, “Towards the World Summit on Sustainable Development,” published by the Heinrich Böll
Foundation, World Summit 2002 Papers No.1. “Nice words, no action. While the Earth Summit in 1992
generated a tremendous wave of enthusiasm for promoting sustainable development, many non-
governmental organizations that have followed the progress of governments and international bodies
towards meeting the targets and recommendations which were set out in the Rio pledges, have witnessed
little progress in some of the most critical areas,” at 6.

9
Furthermore, fundamental principles of good governance such as representativeness,
transparency, and accountability are still at issue in many of the institutions with
environmental responsibilities. These procedural shortcomings undermine the legitimacy
of the system as a whole.
Concerns arise not just from governments. The ongoing street protests by a range of
environmental non-governmental organizations, from Washington to Prague, about the
role of the World Bank and the IMF are emblematic of broader public dissatisfaction with
how environmental issues are being managed at the global scale. These protests can also
be seen as a signal of distress about the way globalization is unfolding and a sense that
important values are being lost in the headlong rush for liberalized trade and economic
growth.

2.2.5 Fiddling or fixing

A multi-prong agenda of refinements and reform could be developed to address these
many issues. But the list of problems is so long and the baggage associated with the
current regime is so heavy that, at some point, a fundamental restructuring rather than
incremental tinkering becomes a better path forward. In the face of so many difficulties
and the existing regime’s poor track record, any presumption in favor of working with the
status quo cannot be sustained. Moreover, as the analysis above suggests, the nub of the
issue is structural, making a different starting point and a new institutional design
advisable.

3. Functions and Features of a GEO

The core function of a new Global Environmental Organization should be to fashion a
coherent and effective international response to global-scale pollution control and natural
resource management issues. At the national level, systems exist to regulate business,
harness market forces, and ensure collective action in response to a range of
environmental problems. With regard to the atmosphere, oceans, seabed, and other
elements of the global (and regional) commons, such structures do not exist or are not
functioning.20 Conceptually, a GEO fills an undeniable need for a mechanism to promote
collective action at the international scale. Practically, a new body offers the chance to
build a coherent and integrated environmental policymaking and management framework
that addresses the challenges of a shared global ecosystem.
A GEO must, of course, accommodate the diverse needs of countries across the Earth and
be responsive to the concerns of the increasing number of actors or stakeholders
(business entities, environmental groups, and the broader set of non-governmental
organizations that make up civil society) beyond national governments. And movement
forward on the environmental front must be paired with a real commitment to poverty
20
See WHAT 2000 distinguishing between three levels of commons—global commons (those outside
national territorial limits, such as the high seas, the atmosphere, and Antarctica); regional commons
(watersheds, basins, and other ecosystems crossing national borders and under the potential control and
management of a group of states); and national commons (local resources within the nation state and under
the control of national or sub-national governments). The interconnectedness among these levels is
recognized but the lack of adequate institutional mechanisms for global commons management is notable.

10
alleviation and economic growth across the world so that the vision of sustainable
development can be achieved.
With these needs in mind, we see four core capacities as essential in a revitalized
international environmental regime: (1) decision-making, (2) implementation, (3)
monitoring, and (4) dispute resolution.21 A GEO should also be organized around good
governance principles such as subsidiarity, integration, participation, transparency, and
accountability.

3.1 Decision-Making
Sound environmental decision-making hinges on the availability of data, information, and
analysis. To ensure sensitivity to the diversity of circumstances and values that exists
across countries, any new body must be committed to open process and vigorous debate.
A GEO should thus be capable of executing the following functions:
 Scientific assessment, including environmental data collection and analysis. Reliable
data of high quality and comparability would support an integrated, ecosystem-based
approach to problem definition and assessment. A strong data foundation would also
permit much more vigorous initiatives to identify and disseminate information on best
practices in the policy and technology realms. Long-term forecasting of
environmental trends, early warnings of environmental risks, and intergenerational
impact assessments could be devised on the basis of such data.
 Knowledge networking, drawing on a wide range of sources for information and data,
problem identification, impact analysis, policy option development, and program
evaluations. Given the inherent complexity and uncertainty of environmental
policymaking, it is especially important that problems be approached from multiple
perspectives so as to facilitate broad-based agreement on the best route forward.
 Rule-making, starting with the establishment of policy guidelines and international
norms, which might, over time, develop into more formal rules. Broader access to
data, information, and knowledge promotes consensus building on the scope of
problems and ultimately movement toward broadly accepted norms. Laying the
analytic groundwork for guidelines, identifying ways to address problems that require
a “common but differentiated” response, and conducting international negotiations,
especially with regard to transboundary externalities and the management of shared
resources, would be critical functions.

3.2 Implementation
Ultimately, the implementation of global environmental agreements and compliance with
international commitments becomes a matter of execution at the national and local levels.
Building environmental capacity within nation-states is thus of critical importance.
Comparative data and public disclosure of results represent critical tools in the push for
international environmental progress. Shared information allows best practices,
21
Tamiotti and Finger 2001 identify the first three functions fundamental to environmental organizations.
We believe that conflict resolution is an important function for a GEO that would facilitate collective action
and ensure effective and equitable environmental solutions.

11
technologies, and policies to be identified, highlighting the opportunities for laggards to
learn from those at the leading edge. Structured programs of financial, scientific,
management, and technical assistance will also be needed, mobilizing both public and
private resources and expertise.

3.3 Monitoring
The monitoring capacity of a GEO should include the continuous and systematic
collection and evaluation of data on environmental performance and trends. Data and
information lies at the heart of good decisionmaking. And while compliance monitoring
should primarily be the function of regional or national organizations, a GEO could
provide a central repository for such information and a mechanism for making the
information available to concerned parties.
Development and systematic review of a core set of environmental indicators is central to
good environmental decisionmaking. A common set of cross-country pollution control
and natural resource metrics, data on trendlines, and a commitment to benchmarking at
the national, regional, local, and corporate scales would enhance opportunities for policy
progress. In addition, careful tracking of trends could provide the foundation for an early
warning mechanism that would facilitate the timely forecasting and identification of
environmental disasters and areas at risk.

3.4 Conflict Resolution

A GEO needs procedures to promote conflict resolution, including convening authority
and agreed mechanisms for dispute settlement that draw on appropriate scientific and
technical expertise. The structures developed need to take account of differences in
levels of development as well as cultural and values diversity to promote ongoing
cooperation and reconciliation.

3.5 Features of a GEO

The key attributes of a GEO should reflect the principles of good governance, including
subsidiarity, an integrated approach to policymaking, broad-based participation,
transparency and accountability. It is now widely recognized that under the
“environmental” rubric fall a broad-based set of issues which require a multi-layered
structure to address them. The principle of subsidiarity (and federalism), urging that
decisions be taken at the most decentralized level that can competently address the issue
at hand, is a core element of sound environmental policy. This principle suggests the
need for division of labor among the various levels of governance and a carefully
delineated and limited agenda for the global-scale environmental body. Focus will be a
key to success for any revitalized international environmental body.
To be effective, a Global Environmental Organization should also be flexible and
responsive to change. It should possess credibility among environmental groups and
other NGOs, within the business community, and more broadly within the UN system.
Analytic rigor, a commitment to sound science, a first-rate staff capable of convening
experts from around the world, modern management, and an oversight mechanism are

12
other essential features. Notably, the availability of adequate and predictable resources
will be critical to the capabilities of a GEO.
A commitment to drawing into the international policymaking process the best data,
thinking, analysis, and policy experience from the multinational economic institutions
(WTO, World Bank, IMF), all the UN entities with environmental responsibilities (CSD,
UNDP, UNCTAD, etc.), the private sector, non-governmental organizations, the
academic community, and civil society at large would dramatically transform the global
environmental decision-making. A GEO could provide the forum where such knowledge
and expertise come together.

4. What’s in a Name?
Proposals for establishing a global environmental body are not new. The first call for
such an organization appeared in 1970.22 Thirty years later the debate has unfolded with
a new vigor but the process has become more complicated. A range of new actors and
stakeholders must be given a chance to be heard. Any proposals for reform of the
institutional architecture need to take this new political setting into consideration along
with the new nature of the global environmental challenges.
We argue for the creation of a Global Environmental Organization, which differs from
proposals for a World Environment Organization (WEO) in terms of the core function
and organizational structure of the proposed entity.23 We draw a conscious distinction
between “global” environmental concerns and the environmental problems of the
“world,” which include many issues that span the globe but have only local impact.
Upholding subsidiarity as a basic tenet of environmental governance, we contend that the
organizing principle and functions of a Global Environmental Organization should
originate in the set of problems that are inherently transboundary—protection of the
global commons. With regard to local or national scale harms, we envision a main thrust
of the GEO’s efforts to be information exchange to support technology transfer and the
identification of best practices at policy, community, and corporate levels. But we
foresee no project or operational role for the GEO on such issues. We believe that, while
independently very important, activities aimed at local issues (provision of drinking
water, wastewater treatment, land management, air pollution control, etc.) should be
undertaken by national governments supported by UNDP, the World Bank, and other
development entities.

5. Organizational Design
Building an institution with a clear mandate, stable funding, and clear legitimacy to
address the problems that nation states are incapable of tackling single-handedly will take
extraordinary political skill and leadership. A successful strategy for advancing a GEO
will require some combination, consolidation, and reorganization of the existing system.
22
See Kennan 1970 advocating the establishment of an International Environmental Agency.
23
Frank Biermann, for example, argues that a World Environment Organization should be capable of
addressing problems related to “purely local environmental goods, such as outdoor and indoor air
pollution.” See Biermann 2001, at 49.

13
The institutional mechanism we advance is one based on a multi-layered structure to
respond to multi-dimensional environmental problems and an extensive public policy
network to ensure participation, transparency, and accountability.
We ultimately envision a three-level structure (or what Maurice Strong has termed “a
triple umbrella”), integrating various international environmental bodies with differing
degrees of intensity—consolidation, coordination, consultation. The core function of the
new organization should be to fashion a coherent and effective international response to
inherently global issues, e.g., those affecting the atmosphere, biodiversity, and the
oceans. At the center of the entity, we would therefore place the organizations
responsible for the global commons—UNEP, WMO, the International Oceanographic
Commission (IOC) and International Hydrological Programme (IHP) of UNESCO—to
form the GEO.
The organization’s second level would bring together the structures and secretariats
created under the spectrum of multilateral environmental agreements. These treaty
bodies would be “co-located” with the GEO and integrated on the principle of
coordination, with a softer degree of control, and an aim to create substantive synergies
and economies of scale without compromising the legal character and independence of
the Conference of the Parties to each treaty. 24 The Global Environmental Organization
would serve as a common management mechanism for these entities and seek to
streamline their operations and improve their effectiveness through a measure of
coordinated budgeting, administration, staffing, resource rationalization, and issue
prioritization.
The third level would involve no direct control but strong and permanent consultation
links with other international bodies that have environmental responsibilities including
the CSD, UNDP, FAO, WHO, and UNESCO. A further set of consultative relationships
would be established with multilateral economic and development agencies, including the
World Bank, regional development banks, and the WTO, as well as with non-
governmental organizations working in the field of environment.
A critical element of a new organization is the voting procedure. Voting rules are of
particular importance for traditionally powerful and traditionally weak states. Developed
countries view the UN style “one country – one vote” approach as an effective veto
power incapacitating most decisionmaking. To developing countries, on the other hand,
the “one dollar – one vote” practices of international financial institutions are
unacceptable. We believe the new environmental regime should strive for decision by
consensus, and that decisionmaking rules should facilitate North-South cooperation. The
“double majority” voting mechanism of the Multilateral Fund of the Montreal Protocol
may provide a good model in this regard.25
24
Proposals for clustering of MEAs have been advanced both along issue lines into five areas: atmospheric,
maritime, land, chemicals, and biodiversity-related conventions (UNEP 2001a), and along cross-cutting,
functional issues such as trade, capacity building, and the development of national implementing legislation
(UNEP 2001). Most important in any coordination attempt would be the clustering of missions and
activities and realizing tangible synergies. Certain degree of both physical and virtual co-location would be
important in this regard.
25
For an argument supporting this view, see Esty 1994; Biermann 1998, 2000. Desai 2000, on the other
hand, proposes a “one state – one vote” system for a new body which he calls United Nations
Environmental Protection Organization, at 497.

14
One red herring needs to be addressed emphatically: the GEO would not add a new layer
of international bureaucracy or create a world government. Quite to the contrary, the
innovative and modern organizational structure we envision could be largely virtual.
Moreover, movement toward a GEO should entail consolidation of many of the existing
panoply of international environmental institutions and provide a streamlined mechanism
for managing ecological interdependence.
At the center of our proposal for a GEO lies a global public policy network – drawing in
issue-specific expertise – from around the world. Such networks, made up of relatively
stable sets of private and public organizations, can operate as a flexible coordinating
system, bringing together the public sector (states and international public organizations),
civil society (NGOs, community groups, and others), and the private sector (corporations,
other businesses, and their associations)26 for the purposes of agenda-setting, analysis,
negotiation, policy formulation, implementation, and institutional learning. Global
public policy networks represent an innovative organizational and social mechanism for
responding to an ever more complex international policy environment. The flexible
structure makes it possible to take advantage of Digital Age27 communications and
information technologies to build new opportunities for cooperation.28

6. Benefits of a GEO
Environmental improvements are often seen as a burden rather than as a collective good.
Any reform of the institutional architecture is likely to be viewed with doubt, skepticism,
and fears about the costs to be borne. The fundamental question for governments in
North and South alike would be “what’s in it for me?” Countries in the North seek
effectiveness and efficiency in addressing global scale harms that threaten to impose real
costs on their societies. Nations in the South want economic growth and an equitable
global scale environmental approach that does not undermine their development.
A more streamlined and rationalized structure would be better able to address both sides
of this equation by providing an institutional mechanism for solving problems requiring
international cooperation, by eliminating overlapping mandates, freeing additional
resources and enhancing transparency, accountability and participation. Some of the
benefits from institutional reform resulting in the creation of a Global Environmental
Organization would thus include:

26
For an extensive analysis of global public policy networks, see Wolfgang H. Reinicke and Francis Deng
2000, “Critical Choices: The United Nations, Networks, and the Future of Global Governance,” available at
http://www.globalpublicpolicy.net
27
For a run-down on the environmental potential of the Information Age, see Daniel C. Esty, “Digital
Earth: Saving the Environment,” OECD Observer (May 2001).
28
Examples of successful public policy networks include the The World Commission on Dams (recently
awarded the highest environmental recognition, the Zayed International Prize for the Environment, for
effectively addressing the environmental impacts of large dams and setting a standard for other complex
environmental problems), The Global Knowledge Partnership, the Roll Back Malaria initiative, etc. For
more information on these and other public policy networks, see
http://www.yale.edu/gegdialogue/morepublicpolicynetwork.html

15
6.1 Improved Collective Action
Solving a collective action problem involves three phases. First, the possibilities for
cooperation need to be identified and their relative value assessed. Second, the parties
need to agree on a scheme of cooperation that produces most benefits for most actors and
bargain for their distribution. Third, parties to the cooperative agreement would require
assurance—through monitoring and, possibly, enforcement—that the other signatories
are complying with their commitments.29 Thus, solving collective action problems
involves large transaction costs that no single actor would be willing to bear in the
absence of cooperation from others.30 Shifting from a prisoners’ dilemma world of free-
riding and lose-lose outcomes to one where reciprocity is recognized and collaboration
understood requires a carefully constructed institutional architecture.
A GEO would be able to provide the framework for addressing collective action
problems by (1) creating a policy space for continuous interaction among actors, (2)
ensuring that multi-dimensional issues are addressed directly and with full participation,
and (3) revealing the common interests of the parties through a continuous flow of
information. Consensus building, critical for the solution of environmental problems,
would be facilitated within an institutional structure that highlights the “repeat” nature of
the “game.” Multi-dimensional relations can facilitate agreement by providing
opportunities for trade-offs that compensate for differences in cooperative gains.31 The
burdens of participation, the risk of being a contributor while others are free-riding, and
the threat of loss of competitiveness to violators would likewise be reduced through a
structure that systematically tracks commitments and exposes non-compliance with
agreements. A fixed, open, and transparent institutional structure would further allow
developing countries not only to have their voices heard more clearly but also to more
easily form coalitions for bargaining on issues of particular importance.

6.2 Improved Problem Solving

Information, knowledge, and the capacity to apply them are critical conditions for
enabling effective problem solving. A rationalized organizational structure with a central
goal of addressing environmental concerns in an integrated manner using modern
technology and information tools has much to offer. With a global public policy network
at its core, a GEO offers the promise of broader participation, more analytic rigor, and
better problem solving.
By reducing the overlap of responsibilities that handicaps the current regime, a GEO
would allow for better budget and issue prioritization and more focused policy responses.
It would facilitate an appropriate matching of planetary needs with funding commitments,
increased effectiveness and efficiency in responding to environmental challenges, and a
more sharply focused international environmental regime. A more streamlined and even
29
Taylor and Singleton 1993.
30
On the issue of transaction costs, see Coase 1960.
31
See McGinnis 1986 and Sand 1991, cited in Taylor and Singleton 1993. See Whalley and Zissimos 2001
for a proposal of a global environmental organization as a “mechanism through which environmental
commitments made by custodians of environmental assets with global reach could be exchanged for non-
environmental considerations (including money), and thereby make progress towards internalizing the
externalities involved,” at 30.

16
“virtual” structure would be especially beneficial to developing countries whose limited
human and financial resources could be concentrated on the key negotiations and
meetings. Understaffed environment officials in the developing world would not have to
spend their time traversing the world from meeting to meeting, negotiation to negotiation.

6.3 Improved Legitimacy

Compliance with international obligations is not solely a function of the probability of
sanctions, but also of a perception of fairness, legitimacy, and morality of the law. 32
These perceptions hinge on both “distributive justice” and “procedural justice,” making
the fairness of the outcome and the process important variables. If norms, rules, and
principles are seen as legitimate, they will garner support and adherence. Countries will
often comply with rules if there has been adequate representation and participation in the
process of developing them, even if the final outcome is not to their immediate
advantage.33 Ultimately, the legitimacy of international institutions depends on whether
they deliver useful results and whether their decisions arise from an appropriate political
process. Principles such as participation, democracy and due process are thus central to
legitimacy.
An innovative institutional mechanism, such as that embodied in the GEO proposal
outlined above, would help to build support for international environmental initiatives. A
body that engages governments and non-governmental entities alike, promotes full and
open debate, draws in wide-ranging expertise, and subjects all decisions to careful
scrutiny and review will systematically produce better and more durable policy outcomes.
Such substantive strength and procedural care is what creates a sense of authoritativeness
and fairness – and therefore legitimacy.

6.4 Strengthened Policy Space for the Environment

A consolidated environmental regime would not only provide a new center of gravity for
addressing inherently global environmental concerns, but would also establish a
counterpart and counterbalance to the WTO, World Bank, IMF, and other elements of the
international economic regime. A Global Environmental Organization would be
especially useful as a way of unburdening the trading system of environmental
decisionmaking that it does not have the capacity to handle. A GEO would provide an
important degree of parallelism on the international scene, helping to build sensitivity to
pollution control and natural resource management issues into the WTO—and greater
sensitivity to trade and economic concerns into international environmental policymaking
and treaties. It is therefore of critical importance that a GEO be able to work with the
WTO, the World Bank, UNDP, and other bodies to establish a functional division of
responsibilities where trade, environment, and development intersect.

32
See Tyler 1990.
33
Ibid.

17
6.5 Improved Fairness
The concerns of developing countries about equity are often cited as an impediment to
devising a new institutional mechanism. This equity agenda has a number of dimensions.
One question centers on who participates in the decisionmaking process. A consolidated
environmental regime would be especially valuable for developing nations. In particular,
a single forum and venue would make it much easier to monitor the spectrum of
international environmental issues at play and to contribute thoughtfully to the global
scale debate even with a relatively small international policymaking team. There would
be no need for the already over-stretched Environment Ministries of the South to traipse
around the world trying to keep up with the plethora of separate bodies and meetings.
A second issue involves who will pay for global scale environmental problem solving.
By placing the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities at the center of a
GEO, efforts to strike a fair balance of rights and responsibilities with regard to
transboundary environmental issues would be improved. A more carefully constructed
and coherent set of international environmental standards would also alleviate fears in the
South that the industrialized world will impose unreasonably high standards (and perhaps
trade penalties for non-compliance) on developing countries, all of whom have many
competing demands for limited public resources. In this regard, a funding mechanism to
subsidize developing country activities in pursuit of global environmental goals will be
essential. It would again be useful to consider establishing a new unified mechanism --
building on the Global Environmental Facility – characterized by transparency,
accountability, and equitable decisionmaking.
A third issue is whether Southern priorities, especially a commitment to poverty
alleviation, will be taken seriously. In this regard, as noted above, the launch of a GEO
must be accompanied by a parallel commitment to an invigorated development agenda.
A related question is whose values will be promoted in a strengthened international
environmental regime. Such concerns make it essential that a GEO be seen as an
inclusive forum that seeks to build consensus on a basis that respects the diversity of
views present across the world. It should also be noted that, properly managed public
policy networks create virtual public space that is easier to enter than the established
physical fora where decisions are currently made. An Information Age set of outreach
mechanisms could also decrease the distance between decentralized constituencies and
global decisionmakers – making it easier to insert into the policy process the broad array
of values, perceptions, and perspectives that are now often overlooked or incompletely
considered and facilitating public understanding of the issues being addressed and
decisions being made at the global scale.

7. Implementation Strategies
An extraordinary mix of political idealism and pragmatism will be required to strengthen
the international environmental regime. One approach would be to start modestly and
have the new organization grow into its mandate over time. For example, creating a
proto-GEO with an initial mandate that includes (1) scientific assessment, (2) knowledge
networking and (3) capacity building might attract broad-based support. Scientific

18
activities represent the dimension of the policy realm where scale economies and other
efficiency gains can most quickly be realized from increased cooperation. Knowledge
dissemination and capacity building would also benefit from a more coordinated and
streamlined approach. With its competence established in these areas, the GEO mandate
might be expanded to include monitoring and coordination. Subsequently, the
organization could assume added responsibilities for rule making and conflict resolution.
A second approach would be to “seize the moment,” perhaps at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, to launch a full-blown GEO. A
revitalized international environmental regime, centered on a GEO, might be created as
part of a two-pronged agenda for sustainable development with the other dimension being
a poverty alleviation initiative (driven through an invigorated World Bank, UNDP, and
CSD).

8. Conclusion
The global environmental management system is clearly falling short of both the world
community’s needs and expectations. Without a concerted effort to address
transboundary pollution spillovers systematically and to utilize the shared resources of
the global commons responsibly, the promise of sustainable development cannot be
achieved. It is time therefore to re-engineer the regime, aiming for a new, forward-
looking, sleeker, and more efficient architecture that will better serve environmental,
governmental, public, and business needs. The logic of a Global Environmental
Organization is straightforward: a globalizing world requires thoughtful ways to manage
ecological interdependence and we need to create an institutional mechanism that is up to
the task.

19
9. References

Biermann, Frank and Udo E. Simonis. 1998. A World Environment and Development
Organization. Stiftung Entwicklung und Frieden (Development and Peace
Foundation), Policy Paper 9.
http://www.fu-berlin.de/ffu/akumwelt/Englisch/download_engl.htm

Biermann, Frank. 2000. The Case for a World Environment Organization. Environment
Vol.42, Number 9. Available at
http://www.yale.edu/gegdialogue/analyticfoundations.html

. 2001. The Emerging Debate on the Need for a World Environment

Organization. Global Environmental Politics Vol. 1, Issue 1.

Coase, Ronald. 1960. The Problem of Social Cost. Journal of Law and Economics. 3: 1-
44.

Desai, Bharat H. 2000. Revitalizing International Environmental Institutions: the UN

Task Force Report and Beyond. Indian Journal of International Law, Vol. 40,
No.3, July-September.

Esty, Daniel C. 1994. The Case for a Global Environmental Organization. In Peter
Kenen, ed. Managing the World Economy: Fifty Years After Bretton Woods.
Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics.

. 2000. An Earthy Effort. Worldlink September-October. Available at

http://www.yale.edu/gegdialogue/analyticfoundations.html

. 2000a. Stepping Up to the Global Environmental Challenge. Fordham

Environmental Law Journal 8 (1): 103–113. Available at
http://www.yale.edu/gegdialogue/analyticfoundations.html

. 2000b. Global Environmental Agency will Take Pressure Off WTO. Financial
Times, July 13, 2000. (response to Calestous Juma 2000a) Available at
http://www.yale.edu/gegdialogue/analyticfoundations.html

French, Hilary (2000). Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the Age of
Globalization. New York : W.W. Norton.

Hardin, Garret. 1968. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 13 December.

Hempel, Lamont C. 1996. Environmental Governance: the Global Challenge.

Washington, DC: Island Press

20
Juma, Calestous. 2000. The Perils of Centralizing Global Environmental Governance.
Environment Vol.42, Number 9. Available at
http://www.yale.edu/gegdialogue/analyticfoundations.html

. 2000a. Stunting Green Progress. Financial Times, July 6, 2000. Available at

http://www.yale.edu/gegdialogue/analyticfoundations.html

Kennan, George. 1970. To Prevent a World Wasteland: A Proposal. Foreign Affairs, Vol.
48, No.3, April.

McGinnis, Michael D. 1986. Issue Linkage and the Evolution of International

Cooperation, Journal of Conflict Resolution 30: 141-70.

Newell, Peter. 2001. New Environmental Architecture and the Search for Effectiveness.
Global Environmental Politics Vol. 1, Issue 1.

Olson, Mancur. 1971. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of
Groups. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Pigou, Arthur C. 1912. Wealth and Welfare.

Pigou, Arthur C. 1920. The Economics of Welfare. London: Macmillan, 1962.

Reinicke, Wolfgang H. and Francis Deng. 2000. Critical Choices: The United Nations,
Networks, and the Future of Global Governance, available at
http://www.globalpublicpolicy.net

Sand, Peter H. International Cooperation: The Environmental Experience, in Jessica

Tuchman Mathews, ed., Preserving the Global Environment. New York: Norton.

South African NGO Caucus on the World Summit for Sustainable Development. 2001.
Towards the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Heinrich Böll
Foundation World Summit 2002 Papers No.1.

Tamiotti, Ludivine and Matthias Finger. 2001. Environmental Organizations: Changing

Roles and Functions in Global Politics. Global Environmental Politics Vol. 1,
Issue 1.

Taylor, Michael and Sara Singleton (1993). The communal resource: Transaction costs
and the solution of collective action problems. Politics and Society. Vol. 21,
Issue 2.

Tyler, Tom. 1990. Why People Obey the Law. New Haven: Yale University Press.

UNEP. 2000. Annual Report. Available at http://www.unep.org/

21
UNEP. 2001. International Environmental Governance: Report of the Executive
Director, presented at the Meeting of the Open-Ended Intergovernmental Group
of Ministers or their Representatives on International Environmental Governance,
New York, April 18 2001 (UNEP/IGM/1/2). Available at
http://www.undep.org/ieg

UNEP. 2001a. Multilateral Environmental Agreements: A Summary, Report of the

Executive Director (UNEP/IGM/1/INF/1). Available at http://www.undep.org/ieg

Von Moltke, Konrad. 2001. The Organization of the Impossible. Global Environmental
Politics Vol. 1, Issue 1.

Whalley, John and Ben Zissimos. 2001. What could a World Environmental Organization
Do? Global Environmental Politics Vol. 1, Issue 1.

WHAT (World Humanity Action Trust). 2000. Governance for a Sustainable Future.
Nottingham, UK: Russell Press Ltd.

WRI (World Resources Institute). 1998-1999. World Resources 1998-1999. Washington,

DC.

22