Radoslav S. Dimitrov

Hostage to Norms: States, Institutions and Global Forest Politics •

Global forest politics reveal surprising impacts of environmental norms on state behavior at the international level. Negotiations regarding deforestation have repeatedly failed to produce a policy agreement. Instead of abandoning the deadlocked talks, governments created the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF), a hollow entity deliberately deprived of decision-making powers. Various theoretical perspectives fail to explain why states create blank international institutions without policy mandates. Several arguments are advanced here. First, a global norm of environmental multilateralism (NEM) helps explain the creation of the UNFF as well as universal state participation in it. Second, such good norms can have negative consequences in world politics. NEM prohibits states from disengaging from failed political initiatives, and fosters the creation of hollow institutions that nourish skepticism about the effectiveness of global governance. Finally, global forestry defies the widespread academic notion that norms, institutions and governance are coterminous. Sometimes states design decoy institutions whose function is to preempt governance.

Contested Waters: Conflict, Scale, and Sustainability in Aquatic Socioecological Systems

Adequate interpretations of the complex social processes that contribute to the transformation of aquatic ecosystems and subsequent conflicts over water demand an interdisciplinary perspective. In this special issue, we focus on the multiple causes of conflicts over water, sensitive to the complex interrelations between and within social and ecological phenomena that result in transformed and contested environments. The cases presented here--representing research carried out in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey, and the United States--emphasize three interrelated themes: the need to account for multiple spatial and temporal scales in analyzing conflicts over water and water-related resources; the complex character of environmental (or ecological) conflict; and questions of sustainability. Ultimately, more incisive understandings of the multiple causes of conflicts over water and aquatic resources are contingent on the integration of multiple disciplinary perspectives. This understanding will in turn promote uses of water and water-related resources that sustain rather than degrade aquatic socioecological systems.

Inside Copenhagen: The State of Climate Governance

This article clarifies the outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference from the perspective of a government delegate. Access behind closed doors reveals the full extent of the damage. The failure at Copenhagen was worse than our worstcase scenario but should not obscure a bigger and brighter picture. Aggregate climate governance is in healthy condition that contrasts with the plight of multilateral climate governance. While the multilateral UN process is damaged, multilevel governance comprising regional, national and local climate policies worldwide is steadily gaining speed. The challenge to the academic community is to develop a composite measure of multilevel governance that captures aggregate public and nonstate policy initiatives at various levels.

Knowledge, Power, and Interests in Environmental Regime Formation

Knowledge-based approaches to the study of international environmental cooperation tend to treat knowledge as a single variable. It is more useful to distinguish between different types of information and to analyze their roles in policy formation separately. Disaggregating knowledge reveals important aspects of the interplay between knowledge, interests, and power which otherwise remain hidden, and helps solve empirical puzzles and theoretical contradictions. Its utility is illustrated in a comparison between two prominent cases of regime-making efforts: deforestation (non-regime) and ozone depletion (regime). The study relies on analysis of multilateral scientific assessments, observation of UN meetings, and interviews with scientists and policymakers. The evidence suggests that reliable information about the cross-border consequences of a problem is of critical importance in regime formation as it facilitates utility calculations and the formation of interests. By contrast, other types of seemingly relevant scientific knowledge appear to be of far lesser importance. Moreover, contrary to power-over-knowledge theorizing, the state of knowledge cannot be easily explained with reference to political power.

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change: Behind Closed Doors

The Paris Agreement constitutes a political success in climate negotiations and traditional state diplomacy, and offers important implications for academic research. Based on participatory research, the article examines the political dynamics in Paris and highlights features of the process that help us understand the outcome. It describes battles on key contentious issues behind closed doors, provides a summary and evaluation of the new agreement, identifies political winners and losers, and offers theoretical explanations of the outcome. The analysis emphasizes process variables and underscores the role of persuasion, argumentation, and organizational strategy. Climate diplomacy succeeded because the international conversation during negotiations induced cognitive change. Persuasive arguments about the economic benefits of climate action altered preferences in favor of policy commitments at both national and international levels.

Water, Conflict, and Security: A Conceptual Minefield

Approaches to water planning and international arrangements for water conflict resolution are conditioned by the context in which water resources are discussed and by the priorities that emerge from such discussions. This chapter analyzes the consequences of linking water to security issues, and the paradigmatic influence of competing notions of security on water policy directions. I develop a generic model of what constitutes any notion of security: what is to be protected, from what dangers, by what means, and by whom. This template is used as an analytical device to consider three distinct versions of environmental security: (1) prevention of environmental conflicts, (2) food security, and (3) ecological security. The central argument is that these diverse conceptions drive water discourses in divergent directions, and establish goals that are not easily compatible with one another. Pursuing one type of security is likely to compromise other types.

Precaution in global environmental politics

The article evaluates the application of the precautionary principle at the international level. It employs a comparative study of four cases in global environmental politics: ozone depletion, acid rain, deforestation and coral reef degradation. Contrary to widespread academic notions, the precautionary principle is not widely applied in international environmental policy. The empirical record shows that governments abstain from regulatory policy when they face uncertainty about key aspects of ecological problems. The key question that the literature has ignored is: what kind of uncertainty? Indeed, states do take action when the extent of ecological problems is unknown. However, uncertainty about the transboundary consequences of alleged problems prevents international policy. Existing scholarship has misappraised the status of PP in international law, by underspecifying when PP is applied and under what kind of scientific uncertainty.

Global commons, domestic decisions: The comparative politics of climate change

Climate policy today is a remarkably vibrant realm of policy development and implementation. Modern societies are embarking on a historical socioeconomic transition to a Clean Economy based on energy efficiency and renewable energy. Since 2007, ninety countries with significant emissions are developing ambitious domestic policies, many backed with detailed policy implementation plans. And while there is a growing policy convergence, some countries move faster than others. Kathryn Harrison and Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom have led a team of scholars to explain national differences in domestic climate policy. The result of their work is an elegant edited volume of less than 300 pages that offers a comprehensive and lucid picture of climate policy in the European Union, the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, Australia and China. The central research question animating the project pertains to what shapes national policy making on climate and energy issues. The editors manage to steer clear of theoretical debates and purposefully omit the standard review of theoretical literature, a decision that is bold and refreshing among political science texts and gives the book a down-to-earth, no-nonsense character. The research project is designed in the classical tradition of comparative politics. Authors seek to understand two political outcomes: national decisions to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the stringency of national policy development. In the search for answers, they focus on self-interest, ideas and domestic institutions. The particular independent variables considered here are: policymakers’ self-interest arising from electoral incentives and policy costs of implementation; ideas such as norms, political ideology and scientific knowledge on climate change; and domestic electoral systems, horizontal concentration of authority (separation of powers) and vertical diffusion of authority (i.e., federalism). The introductory chapter outlines the analytical framework and lists theoretical expectations. What follows are seven in-depth country case studies presented in separate chapters written by