Sikina Jinnah

Overlap Management in the World Trade Organization: Secretariat Influence on Trade-Environment Politics

This article builds on recent scholarship that explores the nature of secretariat influence in global governance. By combining data from interviews with WTO delegates and secretariat staff with document analysis, this study examines how the WTO secretariat is shaping trade-environment politics by using its bureaucratic authority to influence overlap management in the WTO. This study argues that secretariat influence is present, but varies in form across cases. It shows up in the forms noted by previous scholars in their examinations of UNEP secretariats (i.e. negotiation-facilitation, capacity building, and knowledge-brokering), but also in previously un-discussed forms of influence such as marketing convention norms, and litigation facilitation. It further argues that secretariat influence matters in that the WTO secretariat plays an important role in shaping the way trade-environment issues evolve within the WTO, shaping its own identity as a hybrid administrative-judicial organ, as well as in enhancing WTO legitimacy with the broader public.

Could Access Requirements Stifle Your Research

As the rules for foreign access to biological resources are being negotiated, academic researchers and organizations should make their opinions known.

Climate Change Bandwagoning: The Impacts of Strategic Linkages on Regime Design, Maintenance, and Death

The entrée of climate change politics to the center stage of international relations has been accompanied by broad range of strategic linkages, which have produced various institutional interactions. This special issue takes stock of the wide range of ways that international regimes are strategically linked to climate change politics. We do this with a view to better understand both how climate change is shaping the global environmental political landscape, and is being shaped itself through strategic linkages to regimes both within (i.e. forests, biodiversity, fisheries, and desertification) and beyond (i.e. security and human rights) the environmental realm. The contributions that make up this special issue explore when, how, and by whom regime linkages should be pursued, how linkage politics are affecting regime development and function, and in turn how these changes are shaping the evolution of global environmental politics and problem solving writ large.

Marketing Linkages: Secretariat Governance of the Climate-Biodiversity Interface

In this article I argue that, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), led by its autonomously entrepreneurial Executive Secretary, influences overlap management by strategically linking biodiversity and climate change issues. Specifically, the Secretariat marketed (filtered, framed, and reiterated) strategic frames of the biodiversity-climate change interface that reframed biodiversity from a passive victim of climate impacts, to an active player in climate response measures (i.e. adaptation). This reframing is significant in that a major hurdle to selling the benefits of biodiversity conservation to countries with more pressing development concerns has been the perceived limited relevance of conservation to human well-being. In emphasizing biodiversitys role in human adaptation and security, the Secretariat has begun to shape member state discourse surrounding the biodiversity-climate change linkage. Ultimately aimed at enriching our emerging theoretical understanding of the role of international bureaucracies in global governance, this article illuminates: (1) how the Secretariat understands and manages biodiversity-climate linkages; (2) the origins of the Secretariats understanding and activities surrounding this issue; and (3) how Secretariat participation in overlap management is beginning to influence CBD political processes and outcomes.

Strategic Linkages: The Evolving Role of Trade Agreements in Global Environmental Governance

Recently negotiated linkages between trade and environmental agreements have the potential to enhance environmental regime effectiveness in ways that have been impossible under environmental treaties alone. Specifically, the 2009 U.S.—Peru Trade Promotion Agreement (TPA) contains the most prescriptive environmental directives found in any U.S. trade agreement to date and pioneering provisions linking environmental treaty implementation to the TPA’s much stronger dispute-settlement procedures. The combination of these two elements has begun to catalyze Peru’s implementation of relevant environmental provisions and a corresponding potential for regime effectiveness improvements. Simultaneously, these prescriptive provisions contributed to catastrophic social unrest in Peru that must be acknowledged and addressed by policy makers in the United States and abroad before this agreement is exported to other countries.

Diffusion Through Issue Linkage: Environmental Norms in US Trade Agreements

How do environmental norms and policies diffuse across borders? In this article, we argue that preferential trade agreements (PTAs) can play an important role in this process. Specifically, we argue that the US has long used PTAs as mechanisms to diffuse such norms, and show this through an empirical examination of three US PTAs, each from a distinct phase of US trade policy. We demonstrate how the US used the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and the US-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement as vehicles to diffuse norms of (1) public participation in environmental policy-making, and (2) effective enforcement of environmental laws to trading partner nations. In doing so, we both illuminate a new mechanism of environmental norm diffusion and demonstrate the importance of this mechanism in changing environmental policy and practice across borders.

Solar radiation management: a proposal for immediate polycentric governance

ABSTRACT The stringency of the 1.5 degree goal under the Paris Agreement, coupled with the mismatch between that goal and domestic mitigation pledges, inevitably directs attention onto the potential future role of solar radiation management (SRM) technologies. Such technologies, however, remain controversial, and analysis of their environmental, social and ethical implications is at an early stage. In this context, this paper distils four key governance objectives and proposes three specific policy interventions for the near-term governance of SRM technologies. Specifically, we build from existing literature to argue that SRM governance must simultaneously: guard against the risks of uncontrolled SRM development; enable potentially valuable research; build legitimacy for research and any future policy through broad public engagement and ensure that SRM is only considered as one part of a broader mitigation agenda. We propose three interventions to work towards those objectives in the near term by: developing a transparency mechanism for research; creating a global forum for public engagement and including consideration of SRM in the global stocktake under the Paris Agreement. Finally, we argue that carrying out these interventions requires a shared or ‘polycentric’ SRM governance structure that can build on the site-specific capabilities and preferences of existing international institutions. Key policy insights Despite their highly controversial nature, large-scale technological interventions, such as solar radiation management (SRM), must be considered (albeit possibly rejected) for their potential contribution towards meeting the 1.5 degree target established under the Paris Agreement. Existing governance mechanisms for SRM need further development to ensure that unnecessary threats to social and/or natural systems are not incurred. There are at least three governance mechanisms that should be pursued immediately to protect against some of these potential threats, including: a transparency mechanism for SRM research, a global forum to facilitate public engagement and incorporating evaluation of SRM technologies into the global stocktake under the Paris Agreement.

The untapped potential of preferential trade agreements for climate governance

ABSTRACT The regulatory contribution that preferential trade agreements (PTAs) make to global climate governance is assessed through an analysis of climate-related provisions found in 688 PTAs signed between 1947 and 2016. Provisions are analyzed along four dimensions: innovation, legalization, replication, and distribution. Innovative climate provisions are found in several PTAs that are in some cases more specific and enforceable than the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. Nonetheless, these climate provisions offer limited progress because they remain weakly ‘legalized’, fail to replicate broadly in the global trade system, and were not adopted by the largest greenhouse gas emitters. Despite the inclusion of innovative climate provisions in a number of PTAs, their poor design and weak replication position them as some of the weakest environmental provisions within PTAs.

Bringing Politics into SAI

In order to advance a neatly deductive argument, Christopher J. Preston must make a number of assumptions and framing decisions that exclude important practical points from the scope of his analysis. We do not criticize him for doing so, as these simplifications allow him to advance a concise argument about an ethically complex subject. However, as scholars of politics and law, we are interested in what this ethical argument means—and does not mean—for the messy politics of climate engineering. Accordingly, in our response we unpack the political implications of some of Prestons assumptions and framing decisions in an effort to add a layer of practical richness to the abstraction of Prestons analysis.