Pamela S. Chasek

A Comparative Analysis of Multilateral Environmental Negotiations

Global environmental problems pose important diplomatic and legal challenges to the international community. The nature of these problems requires an unprecedented degree of international cooperation that is achieved through multilateral negotiation, which is often shaped by scientific uncertainty, the complexity of the issues, and the wide range of actors and interests. One way of analyzing and explaining this complicated process is through the use of comparative analysis. By breaking down the negotiating process into a series of phases and turning points, it becomes easier to analyze the roles of different actors, the management of issues, the formation of groups and coalitions, and the art of consensus building. This article uses comparative analysis to characterize, develop, and specify a model of the multilateral environmental negotiation process. The model is elaborated upon inductively through a comparative analysis of eleven cases of multilateral environmental negotiations. Statistical techniques are used to determine whether there is any relationship among attributes of the process (within the phases or at the turning points) and between these characteristics and outcomes.

Creating Space for Consensus: High-Level Globe-trotting into the Bali Climate Change Conference

The international community has been trying to find a comprehensive and effective solution to the problem of anthropogenic climate change for well over two decades. The fundamental problem posed by climate change is that any solution, if it is to be effective, requires collectively agreed upon global initiatives. If enough countries do not take sufficient action, any collective endeavors to mitigate the problem will be less effective or may even fail. As a result, mitigating climate change requires a high level of international cooperation. In the climate change arena, negotiators spent much of 2007 searching for common ground and securing universal participation in a new global regime to take effect when the first commitment period under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012. This article examines one of the strategies used to address this challenge in the lead up to the December 2007 Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia: a variation of track-two diplomacy, where climate change was addressed at numerous workshops and high-level meetings to enable parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to create space for building trust and exploring innovative solutions in determining whether or not to embark on negotiations on a post-2012 regime.

Breaking the mold: a new type of multilateral sustainable development negotiation

Participants in the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were reminded time and again that there is no model for the process to develop the SDGs. They resolved to not repeat the closed process used to develop the Millennium Development Goals, but the OWG began work when failures to reach consensus and fatigue with multilateral environmental negotiations dominated delegates’ minds, rather than examples of successfully negotiated outcomes. The OWG Co-Chairs were faced with the daunting task of guiding delegates’ efforts to develop a proposed set of crisp SDGs and targets that all could agree to, and thus, had to accomplish the following goals: (1) reduce delegation rigidity, both of individual Member States and within coalitions; (2) maximize the sense of participation, transparency, and ownership to get the most buy-in at the end; and (3) develop a sense of trust that would change the relationship between Member States. To do this, the OWG Co-Chairs broke the mold of UN multilateral negotiations that Member States and observers had become familiar with and created a different approach. This article examines how the OWG accomplished these goals and overcame the shortcomings of other multilateral negotiating processes on sustainable development to produce a widely supported consensus outcome at a time when governments have struggled to achieve agreement in many multilateral negotiation tracks.

Rethinking the Law and Policy of Protected Areas in a Warming World: Evolving Approaches of American Conservation Organizations

The idea of setting aside natural areas for protection or restricted use has a long history and its practice dates back more than 2,000 years in the Middle East, where large tracts of rangeland were set aside to prevent overgrazing, and in northern India, where the Mauryan kings established reserves to protect forests, elephants, fish, and wildlife. In 1872, the United States established its first “modern” protected area or park to preserve remnants of a local ecosystem—Yellowstone National Park. The dominant underlying philosophy in establishing protected areas until the second half of the 20th century in the United States and elsewhere remained the preservation of nature and wilderness for future generations, while recognizing their potential economic values for tourism and science. Today, IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, also known as the World Conservation Union, defines a protected area as: “A clearly defined geographical space, recognized, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values.” Protected areas perform many functions. In addition to their general importance for conserving biodiversity and delivering ecosystem services, such as watershed and soils protection and shielding human communities from natural disasters, protected areas are important to many local communities, especially