New alliances in global environmental governance: how intergovernmental treaty secretariats interact with non-state acto
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New alliances in global environmental governance: how intergovernmental treaty secretariats interact with non‑state actors to address transboundary environmental problems Thomas Hickmann1 · Joshua Philipp Elsässer2 Accepted: 2 July 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The past few years have witnessed a growing interest among scholars and policy-makers in the interplay of international bureaucracies with civil society organizations, non-profit entities, and the private sector. Authors concerned with global environmental politics have made considerable progress in capturing this phenomenon. Nevertheless, we still lack in-depth empirical knowledge on the precise nature of such institutional interlinkages across governance levels and scales. Building upon the concept of orchestration, this article focuses on the relationship between specific types of international bureaucracies and actors other than the nation-state. In particular, we investigate how the secretariats of the three Rio Conventions reach out to non-state actors in order to exert influence on the outcome of international environmental negotiations. Our analysis demonstrates that the three intergovernmental treaty secretariats utilize various styles of orchestration in their relation to non-state actors and seek to push the global responses to the respective transboundary environmental problems forward. This article points to a recent trend towards a direct collaboration between these secretariats and non-state actors which gives rise to the idea that new alliances between these actors are emerging in global environmental governance. Keywords Global environmental governance · Institutional interplay · Intergovernmental treaty secretariats · Orchestration · Rio Conventions · Non-state actors
* Thomas Hickmann [email protected] Joshua Philipp Elsässer joshua.elsaesser@uni‑potsdam.de 1
Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Princetonlaan 8a, 3584 CB Utrecht, The Netherlands
2
Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Potsdam, August‑Bebel‑Str. 89, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
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T. Hickmann, J. P. Elsässer
1 Introduction Over the past few years, it has become increasingly obvious that the resolution of pressing transboundary environmental problems constitutes a great challenge for the existing global governance framework (Biermann et al. 2012; Hale et al. 2013). With reference to the concept of planetary boundaries, it can be argued that humanity is at a critical juncture to identify new sustainability paths for the twenty-first century and beyond (Rockström et al. 2009; Steffen et al. 2015). This seems to be most prevalent in the issue-areas of climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation. Consequently, structural changes in global environmental governance are urgently needed both within and outside United Nations (UN) institutions, including fully fledged international organizations, specialized bodies and programs, as well as secretariats of international environmental agree
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