Suchergebnisse

The 21st century has given rise to a growing class of challenges that are difficult – perhaps impossible – to address effectively within framework of the existing global order. While numerous factors play a role in causing this problem, this essay focuses on difficulties arising from the influence of the paradigm of "relative gains maximization" as a determinant of the course of interactions among actors on a global scale. Following an account of the nature and impact of this paradigm, the essay explores prospects both, for reforming the paradigm to ameliorate its effects and for more transformative changes featuring the development of a new paradigm. The way forward is to develop perspectives that highlight the need for cooperative measures to address common concerns arising in a world of complex systems.

Is the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change destined to succeed or doomed to fail? If all the pledges embedded in the intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) are implemented fully, temperatures at the Earth's surface are predicted to rise by 3–4 °C, far above the agreement's goal of limiting increases to 1.5 °C. This means that the fate of the agreement will be determined by the success of efforts to strengthen or ratchet up the commitments contained in the national pledges over time. The first substantive section of this essay provides a general account of mechanisms for ratcheting up commitments and conditions determining the use of these mechanisms in international environmental agreements. The second section applies this analysis to the specific case of the Paris Agreement. The conclusion is mixed. There are plenty of reasons to doubt whether the Paris Agreement will succeed in moving from strength to strength in a fashion resembling experience with the Montreal Protocol on ozone depleting substances. Nevertheless, there is more room for hope in this regard than those who see the climate problem as unusually malign, wicked, or even diabolical are willing to acknowledge.

This article presents the results of an effort to identify the most important contributions I have been able to make in the course of a lifetime of thinking about the roles that social institutions play in governing human-environment relations. Some of the resultant propositions are general in the sense that they apply to environmental governance at all levels of social organization. Others are specific to the international level or to what we generally think of as international environmental governance. The basic message is that institutions are important determinants of human-environment relations but that they typically operate in conjunction with a variety of other drivers in a pattern best described as complex causation. As we move deeper into the Anthropocene, an era characterized by human domination of biophysical systems, the need to improve our understanding of environmental governance has become increasingly urgent. Adapted from the source document.

Interacting forces of climate change and globalization are transforming the Arctic. Triggered by a non-linear shift in sea ice, this transformation has unleashed mounting interest in opportunities to exploit the region's natural resources as well as growing concern about environmental, economic, and political issues associated with such efforts. This article addresses the implications of this transformation for governance, identifies limitations of existing arrangements, and explores changes needed to meet new demands. It advocates the development of an Arctic regime complex featuring flexibility across issues and adaptability over time along with an enhanced role for the Arctic Council both in conducting policy-relevant assessments and in promoting synergy in interactions among the elements of the emerging Arctic regime complex. The emphasis throughout is on maximizing the fit between the socioecological features of the Arctic and the character of the governance arrangements needed to steer the Arctic toward a sustainable future.

That the Arctic is undergoing transformative changes driven in large part by external forces is no longer news. The high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, which are not themselves significant sources of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) or short-lived climate pollutants (such as black carbon soot), are experiencing effects attributable to climate change that are equal to or greater than those occurring in any of the planet's other large regions. Prominent among these effects are rising surface temperatures, a deepening of the active layer of the permafrost, the collapse of sea ice, increases in the intensity of coastal storm surges made possible by the retreat of sea ice, the accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and the acidification of marine systems. The deposition of black carbon in the high north alone—almost 60 percent of which is thought to originate in Europe—appears to account for half or more of the increase in temperature occurring in the Arctic. Positive feedback processes, such as lowered albedo (that is, the capacity of Earth's surface to reflect incoming solar radiation back into space) following the melting of ice at sea and snow on land, have the effect of magnifying the impact of these external forces. Nowhere is the challenge of adapting to the impacts of climate change more urgent than in Arctic coastal communities confronted with the need to relocate to avoid physical destruction. And nowhere are the threats to individual species (for example, the polar bear) and whole ecosystems more severe than they are in the Arctic, where biophysical changes are outstripping the capacity of plants and animals to adapt to altered conditions.