Analysis Of International Environmental Security: An Institutional Perspective

Ten years after the Rio Earth Summit, and thirty years after the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, the world community lacks effective institutional and legal mechanisms to address global-scale environmental degradation. This deficiency weighs ever more heavily as nation-states come to recognize their inability to address critical problems on a national basis and to appreciate the depth and breadth of their interdependence.The current international environmental security system is weak, fragmented, lacking in resources, and handicapped by a narrow mandate. There is motion, but there is little progress. More than 500 multilateral environmental treaties are now in existence, more than a dozen international agencies share environmental responsibilities, and yet environmental conditions are not improving across a number of critical dimensions. The environmental challenges we now face clearly illustrate the extent of interconnectedness of the earth's ecological as well as economic systems. These problems demand collective action on a global scale, yet there is no established and effective forum where parties can engage in a sustained and focused dialogue, identify priorities, and devise action plans for tackling environmental concerns with worldwide implications.The disconnection between environmental needs and environmental performance in the current international system is striking. New institutional mechanisms for better global governance are urgently needed. The haphazard development of international environmental governance system: (1) a jurisdictional gap, (2) an information gap, and (3) an implementation gap. The list of problems is so long and the baggage associated with the current regime so heavy that at some point a fundamental restructuring rather than incremental tinkering becomes a better path forward. The need for international cooperation to address environmental problems with transboundary or global implications is clear both in theory and in practice.In our view, a new international environmental security system could effectively respond to both the common elements of national problems and the special demands of transboundaryissues and global public goods. The first step is to upgrade UNEP from a mere UN program to a full-fledged international organization, or World Environmental Organization. WEO will have its own budget and legal personality, increased financial and staff resources, and enhanced legal powers. There are three benefits for developing countries. First, upgrading UNEP to a WEO as a UN specialized agency could ameliorate the co-ordination deficit in the global governance architecture that results in substantial costs and sub-optimal policy outcomes; Second, if UNEP were upgraded to a WEO as a UN-specialized agency, the body would be better poised to support regime-building process, especially by initiating and preparing new treaties. Third, upgrading UNEP to a WEO as a UN specialized agency could assist in the build-up of environmental capacities in developing countries.The second step is to establish a World Environmental Court. The third step is to transform the global environmental summit to a forum where parties can engage in a sustained and focused dialogue, identify priorities, and devise action plans for tackling environmental concerns with worldwide implications. We suggest launching a Global Information Clearinghouse and a Global Technology Clearinghouse as immediate concrete steps forward and initiating a Commission of eminent people to examine options for mere fundamental structural reform.