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Global agreements to mitigate climate change, conserve biodiversity or combat desertification typically take center stage in scholarly discussions about international environmental politics. Even though the United Nations Environment Programme reported ten years ago that regional agreements make up two-thirds of all international treaties, regional cooperation has by comparison either received scant attention or been conceptually and empirically lumped together with global treaties. This lack of knowledge about the historical and current scope of regional governance is a serious obstacle to understanding the architecture of global environmental governance and to overcoming current bottlenecks in international environmental cooperation. In response, we report on the outcome of an analysis that complements the most comprehensive database on international environmental agreements (iea.uoregon.edu) with variables for analysis at the regional level. We introduce a multidimensional typology of regional agreements based on contiguous/noncontiguous agreement membership, contiguous/noncontiguous spatial ambit, and whether membership and ambit are adjoining and/or coextensive. We discuss the theoretical and empirical relevance of the different types of agreements and the nature and prevalence of special cases. Given the previous lack of research in this area, our primary purpose is to present a systematic account of regional environmental governance, leaving causal analysis to our own and others' future research. We identify a number of knowledge gaps and analytical directions in the conclusion. -- regional cooperation ; environmental politics ; typology of international cooperation

Despite its many advantages, teaching transdisciplinary is a costly enterprise. Transferring diverse theoretical, methodological, and practical skills may require several teaching staff; developing meaningful stakeholder interaction is time-intensive; and managing the research process demands significant efforts in logistics and coordination. This article seeks to make two distinct contributions. Conceptually, it introduces a framework for distinguishing between soft, inclusive, reflexive, and hard transdisciplinarity, based on the notion that there are diminishing returns to all features of the practice. Empirically, it examines a classroom simulation – the Sustainable Development Indicator Exercise (SDIE) – as an example of soft transdisciplinarity. In the SDIE interdisciplinary student groups play the role of policy advisers. Building on a concrete transdisciplinary research project, they explore their understanding of sustainability, develop a multi-criteria decision making method for assessing sustainability criteria and indicators, elaborate and present their results, and reflect on their experience. All aspects of the exercise follow the logic of role playing: organizing group interaction, distributing responsibilities, interacting with their political principal, presenting their findings, and evaluating their progress. Experience from the simulation reveals insights into ways students address and express concerns with objectivity, transparency, deliberation, and balancing sustainability; it also points to ways for moving beyond soft transdisciplinarity.

In the context of increasing fragmentation and functional differentiation in international governance, new environmental regionalism represents a recent trend involving initiatives that seek to territorialize environmental governance at the level of transboundary ecoregions, such as mountain ranges or river basins. This article examines the implications of this trend for sustainable development, which is defined here as a procedural norm for reconciling the tradeoffs between environmental, economic, and social dimensions of wellbeing. This article (1) traces arguments concerning the origins of functional differentiation to research on European state-making; (2) offers two complementary perspectives that generate insights into sustainable development at the transboundary level, one focusing on the intersection of multiple and overlapping functional spaces, and the other focusing on regionalization as the domestic manifestation of regional themes; and (3) illustrates the significance of these perspectives in the case of the European Alps. The article suggests that the Alps serve both as the bounded object of an international legally binding agreement asking its signatories to formalize sustainable development, and as the intersection of multiple overlapping functional spaces. It lends support to claims about the link between rescaling and functional differentiation, but demonstrates that a sympathetic critique of new environmental regionalism need not conclude that the phenomenon exacerbates the fragmentation of international governance.

In the context of increasing fragmentation and functional differentiation in international governance, new environmental regionalism represents a recent trend involving initiatives that seek to territorialize environmental governance at the level of transboundary ecoregions, such as mountain ranges or river basins. This article examines the implications of this trend for sustainable development, which is defined here as a procedural norm for reconciling the tradeoffs between environmental, economic, and social dimensions of wellbeing. This article (1) traces arguments concerning the origins of functional differentiation to research on European state-making; (2) offers two complementary perspectives that generate insights into sustainable development at the transboundary level, one focusing on the intersection of multiple and overlapping functional spaces, and the other focusing on regionalization as the domestic manifestation of regional themes; and (3) illustrates the significance of these perspectives in the case of the European Alps. The article suggests that the Alps serve both as the bounded object of an international legally binding agreement asking its signatories to formalize sustainable development, and as the intersection of multiple overlapping functional spaces. It lends support to claims about the link between rescaling and functional differentiation, but demonstrates that a sympathetic critique of new environmental regionalism need not conclude that the phenomenon exacerbates the fragmentation of international governance.

Whereas transboundary regionalism has become a dominant trend in European and international economic and political integration, contemporary earth system governance continues to be characterized by functionally separated issue areas organized as international regimes. The evolution of this system has mirrored the historical process of nation state building, which entailed the reorganization of local interests and identities along functional and national lines. Growing political attention to environmental problems, however, has revealed the limits of functionally separating what is ecologically interdependent. Current processes of regionalization provide a vehicle for innovative approaches to sustainable development. Using subnational and cross border regionalism as a point of departure, this paper explores transboundary regionalism as a model for earth system governance by examining the Alpine Convention as a case study. Although regional environmental agreements have been negotiated in the past, they have narrowly focused on water quality and fisheries. The Alpine Convention, an international agreement among eight European states and the European Union signed in 1991, seeks the protection and sustainable development of a globally significant mountain region. The Convention has also fostered the establishment of a large number of transalpine organizations as well as a nascent alpine identity. In order to critically assess the promise of supranational regionalism in environmental governance, the paper traces the evolution of the Convention from the perspective of territoriality, substantive scope, and institutional form. The paper concludes with a cautiously optimistic note and points to other supranational regional initiatives the Alpine Convention has inspired.