Accountability and legitimacy in earth system governance: A research framework

Ecological Economics 70 (2011) 1856–1864

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Ecological Economics j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / e c o l e c o n

Accountability and legitimacy in earth system governance: A research framework Frank Biermann a,b, Aarti Gupta c,⁎ a b c

Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands Lund University, Sweden Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 17 September 2010 Received in revised form 11 April 2011 Accepted 12 April 2011 Available online 31 May 2011 Keywords: Accountability Legitimacy Earth system governance Environmental reform Global environmental governance

a b s t r a c t Along with concerns over the effectiveness of earth system governance, ways of enhancing its accountability and legitimacy are increasingly coming to the fore in both scholarly debate and political practice. Concerns over accountability and legitimacy pertain to all levels of governance, from the local to the global, and cover the spectrum of public and private governance arrangements. This conceptual article elaborates on the sources, mechanisms and reform options relating to more accountable, legitimate and democratic earth system governance. We proceed in four steps. First, we conceptualize accountability and legitimacy in earth system governance. Second, we place questions of accountability and legitimacy within the larger context of earth system transformation, which, we argue, poses special challenges to the pursuit of accountability and legitimacy. Third, drawing on the contributions to this special section, we analyze different sources and mechanisms of accountability and legitimacy and their effects on the democratic potential and effectiveness of governance. Fourth, in concluding, we outline reform options that may help alleviate persisting deficits in the democratic potential of earth system governance. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Earth system governance is concerned not only with institutional performance and effectiveness but also with the accountability and legitimacy of decision-making. This relates to all levels of governance from the local to the global. It involves the accountability and legitimacy of public regulation as well as novel types of private governance arrangements within and beyond the nation state. In the last century, legitimacy and accountability were concerns to be addressed by national governments and domestic decision processes. In the 21st century, with its emerging trends of governance beyond the state and new demands of earth system governance, the challenges of securing more accountable, legitimate and democratic governance have to be considered in a very different context. This article explores why this challenge is increasingly important in its own right, as well as whether and how more accountable and legitimate governance contributes to effectiveness. One major driving force in the search for more accountable and legitimate governance has been globalization in all its facets, strengthening the need for global and regional rule-making institutions, also in the environmental domain. While international environmental negotiations were fringe issues on the global agenda fifty years ago, there are more than 900 international environmental treaties in force today,1 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 317 482496. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (F. Biermann), [email protected] (A. Gupta). 1 For a database of international environmental agreements, see http://iea.uoregon.edu/. 0921-8009/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.04.008

ensuring an ever denser web of globally negotiated rules and restrictions on state behaviour. These require a reconsideration of the legitimacy and accountability of global governance arrangements. The complexities of globalization have also given rise to a stronger political role for actors beyond the nation-state, from multinational corporations and transnational advocacy groups to science networks and global coalitions of municipalities. In areas where governments fail to agree on effective international rules, non-state actors are now taking the lead in developing global norms and standards, such as with the private voluntary Forest Stewardship Council or the Marine Stewardship Council (Pattberg, 2005). The involvement of private actors in global governance exacerbates the challenge of securing accountability and legitimacy of global rule-making, not least because traditional means of doing so in a national context, such as electoral accountability and constitutional representation, are not applicable to state-led global rulemaking or private forms of global governance. Thus identifying sources and mechanisms that can contribute to enhanced accountability and legitimacy of governance arrangements becomes all important (Kingsbury, 2007; Mason, 2008). The accountability and legitimacy challenges that flow from global (state and non-state) rule-making on environmental issues thus stand at the center of this special section of Ecological Economics. The first three contributions to this section analyze, respectively, the conceptual contours of deliberative systems of global governance that could result in a more democratic earth system governance (Dryzek and Stevenson, 2011-this issue); the promise and pitfalls of relying on an evolving body of global administrative law as a way to secure more globally legitimate and accountable earth system governance (Spagnuolo, 2011-this issue);

F. Biermann, A. Gupta / Ecological Economics 70 (2011) 1856–1864

and the oft-assumed central role of transparency in furthering accountable and legitimate global governance (Mitchell, 2011-this issue). Complementing these broad-ranging conceptual articles are the next four contributions that focus on newly emerging and novel governance arrangements, both public and private, in specific issueareas of earth system governance. These include the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil as a joint governance initiative of business and advocacy groups to green an important commodity chain (Schouten and Glasbergen, 2011-this issue); and the much debated climate governance mechanism relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) (Lederer, 2011-this issue; Rosendal and Andresen, 2011-this issue). In analyzing the prospects for more legitimate and effective climate and forest governance through REDD, these latter contributions draw lessons for REDD from existing market-based climate governance innovations such as the Clean Development Mechanism (Lederer, 2011-this issue) or global funding bodies such as the Global Environment Facility (Rosendal and Andresen, 2011-this issue). The final contribution analyses the accountability and legitimacy potential and deficits of yet another governance innovation, the transnational public–private partnerships (PPPs) agreed at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, with a focus here on PPPs in water governance (Dellas, 2011-this issue). These seven research articles are part of a larger research effort, the Earth System Governance Project, a ten-year global research programme that brings together a worldwide network of scholars seeking to advance understanding of the governance challenges posed by earth system transformations. Earth system governance is defined in the Earth System Governance Project as the interrelated system of formal and informal rules, rule-making mechanisms and actor-networks at all levels of human society (from local to global) that are set up to prevent, mitigate and adapt to environmental change and earth system transformation. Accountability (and related transparency, legitimacy and democracy) of evolving governance arrangements are identified in the Project's Science and Implementation Plan as one of five main analytical challenges facing earth system governance research (Biermann et al., 2009, 2010). This special section is a contribution to this major research task. Equally important, this special section also contributes to important ongoing debates within ecological economics, with its increasing interest in questions of governance. Ecological economics has long argued that values such as equity and justice, considerations of time and place, and a broader perspective on sustainable development are crucial to solving the challenges of multilevel environmental degradation and the transformation of vital planetary systems. The legitimacy of decision-making, the accountability of the governors to the governed, and the role of deliberation and democracy are thus important elements in the evolving field of ecological economics, as evident from new studies that explicitly try to explore the foundations of a more deliberative ecological economics (Zografos and Howarth, 2008). Both earth system governance and ecological economics as analytical and empirical projects are concerned with all levels of policy-making, from the local level in regional parliaments or village councils to the global level of intergovernmental agreements and transnational cooperation. Accountability and legitimacy are critical considerations at all these levels. However, in this and other contributions to this special section, we focus on the global dimensions of policy-making, that is, on the realm of intergovernmental and private governance beyond the nation-state. We proceed in four steps. First, we consider how accountability and legitimacy in earth system governance can be conceptualized. Second, we place questions of accountability and legitimacy within the larger context of earth system transformation, which poses, we argue, a number of special challenges to the quest for accountability and legitimacy of governance. Third, drawing on contributions to the section, we explore different sources and mechanisms of accountability

1857

and legitimacy within various governance arrangements, and their effects on the democratic potential and the overall performance of global governance systems. Fourth, in concluding, we outline reform options that might help to correct long-acknowledged deficits in the accountability, legitimacy and democratic potential of earth system governance. 2. Conceptualizing Accountability and Legitimacy in Earth System Governance Accountability and legitimacy are fundamental categories of politics. Yet both concepts are often ill defined, and there is little agreement on what they entail. Furthermore, the terms are often used interchangeably in academic research and policy debates, adding a certain degree of conceptual confusion. Thus, before we delve into their sources and effects, we first consider how the two terms can be conceptualized. 2.1. Accountability In laypersons' terminology, accountability refers to the willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions. Accountability is thus related to notions of responsibility, with the two terms often used interchangeably, as for instance in a special issue on this topic in Global Environmental Politics (Mason, 2008). In essence, accountability has four elements: (1) a normative element, that is, a standard of behaviour defined with sufficient precision; (2) a relational element, linking those who are held accountable to those who have the right to hold to account; (3) a decision element, that is, a judgment of those actors who may hold other actors accountable about whether the expected standard of behaviour has been met; and finally (4) a behavioural element that allows the governing actor to sanction deviant behaviour of those held accountable. All elements need to be present in sufficient degree to make any accountability relationship meaningful. An important question is the consent of those who are held accountable to this accountability relationship and to the standards of expected behaviour. For example, the staff of an intergovernmental bureaucracy can generally be assumed to consent to the standards of appropriate behaviour expected in their respective functions, as well as to the right of member states to request policy changes if so desired. Yet will they also consent to being held accountable to those impacted by their actions and decisions? This is related to an important distinction between what Keohane (2003) calls internal and external accountability, whereby, in internal accountability, the “principal and agent are institutionally linked to each other”; and in external accountability, those whose lives are impacted, and hence who would desire to hold to account, are not directly (or institutionally) linked to the one to be held to account. This distinction is also of central concern for private rule making in earth system governance, which has been the focus of much attention in recent years. Transnational labeling schemes, for instance, establish standards for the “sustainable” use of natural resources or other goods, which form the normative basis for an accountability relationship between firms that orient their behaviour according to these standards, and customers who expect compliance by firms or else opt to sanction deviant firms by boycotting their products. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil is an interesting illustration of the complex accountability relationships that may arise from such novel governance mechanisms, including the role of inclusion and exclusion in a governance initiative in establishing who accepts accountability claims by whom (Schouten and Glasbergen, 2011-this issue). For example, some producers of palm oil – in many cases in poor developing countries – may not have been sufficiently or effectively included in Roundtable rule-setting processes, or may not have consented to a private governance arrangement in the first place. Such problems of inclusion and exclusion – or, plainly put, of who is a

1858

F. Biermann, A. Gupta / Ecological Economics 70 (2011) 1856–1864

stakeholder in earth system governance – is one key question covered by the contributions to this special section. Another important element of accountability relationships – and an oft-assumed precondition for more accountable and legitimate governance – is the transparency of governance processes and outcomes. Transparency is widely assumed to be critically important to the search for more accountable and legitimate earth system governance (Florini, 2007; Fung et al., 2007; Gupta, 2008). Yet the diverse normative rationales underpinning the current embrace of transparency in governance by different actors, and its uneven institutionalization in specific global governance arrangements, suggests that the link to greater accountability and legitimacy needs more scrutiny (for detailed analyses of this, see Gupta, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c). In line with this, Mitchell's contribution to this special section addresses disclosure-based and education-based transparency policies, and their relationship to more accountable and effective global environmental governance (Mitchell, 2011-this issue). As this contribution suggests, there are few self-evident links here. Instead, different governance ends require differently designed transparency policies, with varying implications for whether and how accountability and legitimacy can be secured and how effective transparency policies are likely to be. Finally, accountability is also a core element of deliberative democracy, which requires, in the terminology introduced here by Dryzek and Stevenson (2011-this issue), that the empowered space of political decision-making is held accountable to the public space of deliberation. Here too, questions of inclusion and exclusion are prominent. Who decides who is to be included in the empowered space of decision-making? Whose voices carry more weight in the public sphere of deliberation? Accountability relationships, in a word, are critical to analyze in the current context of global decision-making in earth system governance, especially given its vast discrepancies of wealth and power, as Spagnuolo (2011-this issue) also highlights. 2.2. Legitimacy Legitimacy commonly describes the state or quality of being legitimate, that is, of being in accord with established legal norms and requirements, or conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards of behaviour. Core elements of the concept of legitimacy are the acceptance and justification of authority. Acceptance relates to the way in which rules or institutions are accepted by a community as being authoritative. Justification relates to the reasons that justify the authority of certain rules or institutions (Bernstein, 2005). In the context of earth system governance, two distinctions seem especially important, both of which have been much debated in recent years and both of which feature prominently in this special section. The first is between input and output legitimacy, originally developed by Scharpf (1997) in order to assess the legitimacy of European decision-making processes and outcomes. Input legitimacy refers to the procedural characteristics of a rule-setting process, while output legitimacy refers to acceptance of rules because of their (perceived) ability to solve problems. Output legitimacy is hence related to governance effectiveness, yet with the fundamental difference that output legitimacy hinges on perceived effectiveness among stakeholders, which is not necessarily the same as resolution of underlying problems (see Dingwerth, 2005, 2007; Lederer, 2011-this issue; Rosendal and Andresen, 2011-this issue; Dellas, 2011-this issue). A second important distinction is between internal and external legitimacy, a distinction similar to internal and external accountability discussed earlier. Internal legitimacy refers to acceptance of norms by participants in an institution, for instance the members of an organization or supporters of a rule-making mechanism. External legitimacy refers to the acceptance of a rule by non-members or nonparticipants. In given empirical situations, the distinctions between internal and external legitimacy can, however, become complex.

Taking the case of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil again, one can distinguish between acceptance of norms by representatives of relevant industries that participate in the roundtable; by representatives of relevant industries that do not participate; and by other actors outside this production process who are affected by its decisions Schouten and Glasbergen (2011-this issue). Similarly, for emerging REDD arrangements, insiders and outsiders will be determined by the scope of REDD's governance aims, which are yet to be consensually agreed (Rosendal and Andresen, 2011-this issue). Thus, in considering the legitimacy of global governance arrangements, a critical question becomes legitimacy in the eyes of whom. With these conceptualizations and questions relating to accountability and legitimacy as our points of departure, we turn next to how the quest for more legitimate and accountable governance is rendered even more complex by the specific governance challenges posed by earth system transformation and global environmental change. 3. Earth System Transformation as a Special Challenge for Accountability and Legitimacy of Governance The quest for accountability and legitimacy of governance is not a new endeavor. However, global environmental change and the emerging transformation of planetary systems, along with the resulting challenge of developing effective systems of earth system governance, poses new challenges for securing the accountability and legitimacy of governance systems. We elaborate on these challenges in this section, drawing on the five core elements of the problem structure of earth system governance, as developed in Biermann (2007). 3.1. Spatial Interdependence First, earth system transformation creates new types and degrees of spatial interdependence at the planetary level. This spatial interdependence is at times systemic (when non-compliance of few countries can nullify policies of others, such as in the case of stratospheric ozone depletion) and at times cumulative (that is, when the accumulation of local harm creates problems of global impact, such as in the case of desertification). In both cases, spatial interdependence poses particular accountability and legitimacy challenges. Systems of accountability are affected particularly by mismatches between principals and agents, between those who seek to hold others accountable and those who are held accountable. Traditional systems of electoral accountability are limited to areas of national jurisdiction, while the effects of environmentally harmful behaviour reach beyond national borders. However, those who are affected by transnational pollution have few rights to hold polluters accountable (on this, see Mason, 2008). International law might provide some means of redress, yet the effectiveness of these emerging norms of international law is in all likelihood low. In the case of climate change, for example, it is difficult for countries that emit relatively small amounts of greenhouse gases in proportion to their populations to hold countries with much higher percapita emissions accountable for the excessive pollution of the atmosphere. Given the elements of accountability outlined above – normative, relational, and behavioural – one could posit that current systems of global governance do not allow for establishing accountability relationships between countries with respect to global pollution, since neither agreement on the appropriate standard of behaviour nor effective sanctioning mechanisms are discernible. Spatial interdependence affects accountability relationships also in transnational private governance systems, which do not rely on traditional notions of national jurisdictions. In theory, the “citizen” as recipient and adjudicator of decision-making power has been replaced by the social construct of the “stakeholder.” Transnational labeling schemes that prescribe certain behavioural standards for firms are construed as being accountable to the “stakeholders” in this policy area, who can enforce disagreements over the fulfillment of

F. Biermann, A. Gupta / Ecological Economics 70 (2011) 1856–1864

certain obligations by consumer boycotts and general reputational damage to non-complying companies. However, the construct of the “stakeholder” is generally difficult to define and is tied in essence to power conflicts among affected actor communities. Systems of inclusion and exclusion become vital to construct the “stakeholders” within a governance system that may have the right to hold other actors accountable to jointly agreed standards of behaviour. Actors that are not (or less) perceived as stakeholders are withheld the right of joining the decision-making process as well as the right to hold others accountable. If legitimacy is consent of the governed, who then are the governed in a spatially interdependent yet unequal governance context? Analyzing necessary parameters of deliberative democratic decisionmaking systems in a global context is a concern taken up by Dryzek and Stevenson (2011-this issue). Spatial interdependence becomes particularly crucial in the relations between richer societies in the North and poorer societies in the South, where actors in the North might explicitly (in transnational organizations) or implicitly (by consumer decisions) assume a governing role over stakeholders from the South. Also the development of global administrative law – hailed as progress by many actors in the North – can be seen as problematic from the perspective of developing countries. An emerging body of global administrative law may be challenging to apply in diverse local contexts. It may even be outright objectionable for poorer countries, if they are negatively affected by the globalization of legal standards that are developed in and benefit mainly the North (Spagnuolo, 2011-this issue). Notwithstanding this, questions of who represents whose interests in a spatially interdependent world transcend the dichotomic NorthSouth relationship that has long been a mainstay of international environmental politics, but is increasingly less so. Instead, earth system governance is marked by conflicts of interests also between developing countries themselves, between those who experience high growth rates and rapid industrialization, and those who are still plagued by persistent poverty and lack of economic growth. As highlighted in the contributions to this special section and elsewhere, one consequence of this is the need to accept increasing global diversity in perspectives and interests, and hence the need for governance systems that can legitimately manage and integrate such diversity in global norm-setting and deliberative processes (Spagnuolo, 2011-this issue; see also Baber and Bartlett, 2009).

3.2. Functional Interdependence Earth system governance is further marked by increasing degrees of functional interdependence, not only in a geographical sense but also across diverse sectors of global production and consumption. The sustainable production and consumption of palm oil, as analyzed by Schouten and Glasbergen (2011-this issue), is a prime example. The production and consumption of palm oil relates to various industrial products and production chains, from margarine to cosmetics, detergents, and fuel. Numerous environmental goods are affected, including the protection of biodiversity, the preservation of forests, and the mitigation of climate change. Socially, palm oil links various groups of consumers with producers, retailers, and affected communities in the producing countries, such as forest-dwelling indigenous people. Again, functional interdependencies in this issue area make any assessment of the accountability and legitimacy of rule-making dependent on the boundaries to be drawn around the “stakeholders” included. Should an evaluation of legitimacy include legitimacy among consumers, producers, retailers, biodiversity activists, climate campaigners, unemployed local poor, forest-dwelling tribes, or only subsections of these, and how can one resolve possible trade-offs between the accountability and legitimacy claims of different groups of potential stakeholders? Functional interdependence in earth

1859

system governance ensures that complex questions of internal and external accountability and legitimacy come persistently to the fore. This is also strikingly evident in controversies over the design of new governance arrangements to combat climate change that rely on carbon stored in forests, in the form of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). As the contributions in this special section demonstrate, forest governance, if considered from a carbon sink perspective alone, would require quite different governance measures than if other forest services such as biodiversity conservation are also considered. The first would merely require increasing timber stocks (this could be achieved through plantations), while the second would require qualitative measures to maintain the ecological integrity of a forest (plantations might be destructive to this goal). Furthermore, the beneficiaries of REDD would vary substantially under these two scenarios, ensuring that analyses of the legitimacy, accountability and effectiveness of evolving REDD governance arrangements will fundamentally depend on which functional interdependencies are acknowledged in its design and execution (Rosendal and Andresen, 2011-this issue; Lederer, 2011-this issue). Functional interdependencies abound in the global environmental domain, with important consequences for securing legitimacy and accountability of governance. Global risk governance is another case in point, whereby broader or narrower framings of risks (socioeconomic, ecological, or human health-related) posed by, for instance, trade in hazardous waste, chemicals or genetically modified organisms, determine who is to be held accountable to whom, how and why (Gupta, 2010b). 3.3. Uncertainty The accountability and legitimacy of earth system governance is also affected by high degrees of uncertainty. This uncertainty relates, first, to the scientific basis of decision-making. Key parameters of the earth system are insufficiently understood, giving ample room for divergent interpretations in political discourse. This has led to the emergence of novel types of global scientific organizations, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which are meant to assess the state of scientific knowledge on climate change. The general perception of a high influence of the IPCC on the political process has resulted in the establishment of similar global environmental assessment institutions in other areas, most recently the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Scientific assessment institutions such as the IPCC, however, are themselves arenas for political debate and conflict, including on essentially contested terms such as equity. The increased legitimacy that the IPCC was meant to bring to global decision-making on climate change has progressed hand in hand with heated debates on the legitimacy of the workings of the IPCC itself. Important conflicts within the IPCC have arisen, for example, around the initially low representation of experts from developing countries; around the extent to which non-English and non-traditional publications are to be included in the assessment; around the inclusion of experts from advocacy organizations; or on the assumptions underpinning scenario building. While many procedural changes to the functioning and modus operandi of the IPCC have increased its perceived legitimacy in some constituencies, such as amongst developing countries who have benefitted from a quota policy to increase Southern participation (Biermann, 2001, 2002), it has also decreased its legitimacy in other communities, including in parts of the mainstream scientific community in some industrialized countries. The legitimacy of global decision-making in earth system governance is complicated not only by scientific uncertainty, but also by normative contestation. While in some cases, such as stratospheric ozone depletion, the appropriate standard of behaviour at global and national levels was quickly and widely agreed, in other areas uncertainty and contestation about appropriate norms and behavioural

1860

F. Biermann, A. Gupta / Ecological Economics 70 (2011) 1856–1864

standards still prevails. Mitchell (2011-this issue) illustrates this very nicely in the distinction he makes between disclosure and educationbased transparency policies, whereby normative contestation about appropriate behaviours fundamentally shapes the legitimacy and success of transparency policies that might, for example, seek to educate as a means by which to improve environmental outcomes. Normative conflict also intersects with scientific uncertainty in ever more complex ways, particularly in controversial anticipatory risk governance challenges. This includes climate change, but also use of nanotechnology or biotechnology in agriculture or human health. As Jansen and Gupta (2009) document, for example, normatively contested visions, particularly of a future with or without genetically modified crops, fundamentally shape present-day outcomes in biotechnology governance. Normative contestation abounds in climate governance as well with consequences for accountability. Relative emissions of countries can be interpreted according to different parameters, such as population or economic parameters, and the interpretation can include or exclude historic emissions, all of which affects the assessment of the relative responsibility of countries such as the United States of America or China in mitigating the problem. Any global emission cap – say 350 or 450 ppm atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration – also depends on assumptions about relative risk aversion. Thus, while 350 ppm is the most risk-averse reduction goal for emissions, it is also the one with potentially the highest political and economic costs. Such conflicts, and associated scientifically and normatively contested trade-offs, fundamentally complicate the quest to enhance the overall legitimacy and accountability of decision-making at the global level.

levels. Part of this discourse is a renaissance of authoritarian claims, implicit in emerging concepts of global emergency governance along the lines more often evident in national decision-making in times of war, natural disasters, or similar catastrophes. The potentially extreme effects of earth system transformation bring numerous crucial yet unexplored governance dilemmas, notably between the adaptability of institutions to quickly emerging crises versus long-term institutional stability and credibility; governance effectiveness versus governance legitimacy, and governance effectiveness versus governance fairness. Resolving these dilemmas may require new and strengthened governance institutions at the global level. The challenge of ensuring the legitimacy and accountability of global governance in particular with a view to potentially drastic climate change is one of the most fundamental challenges in this area.

3.4. Temporal Interdependence

From the analyses in this special section, it is clear that global governance arrangements differ in the degree and manner in which they seek to advance input legitimacy and accountability of their rulemaking processes and decisions. In line with dominant assumptions about the sources of accountability, several governance arrangements focus explicitly on inclusion of different stakeholders as a way of securing greater accountability and legitimacy. This is done through direct network-oriented collaboration between stakeholders, as in the transnational partnerships registered under the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (Dellas, 2011-this issue) or through formalized decision-making systems under the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (Schouten and Glasbergen, 2011-this issue). Yet inclusion may not always be the obvious way to enhance accountability and legitimacy. As Dryzek and Stevenson (2011-this issue), both legitimacy and effectiveness of global decision-making might also hinge on maintaining a critical distance between relevant stakeholders and the empowered space of decision-making. This observation seems to receive empirical justification from Schouten and Glasbergen (2011-this issue) that external NGOs critical of the Roundtable have – by the very fact of their distance from decision-making – helped to empower those NGOs who did participate in the Roundtable. Yet whether this implies that the governance arrangement as a whole is both more accountable and more legitimate as a result remains an intriguing question. This depends on the all-important question of who counts as a stakeholder. But it also depends, as the contributions here highlight, on how stakeholders interact with governance systems, whether by maintaining critical distance from, or participating in, them. These two caveats thus serve to further the debate on internal and external legitimacy and accountability in the literature, by pointing not only to the importance of inclusion and exclusion of given stakeholders but also to their critical distance or engagement with decision-processes in furthering accountability and legitimacy of governance. These observations have important implications for long-standing debates over enhancing participation of a variety of stakeholders in global governance, as a means by which to enhance legitimacy and effectiveness.

A fourth critical problem is the temporal interdependence of earth system transformations. This raises, first, the well-known accountability challenge relating to future generations, that is, that decisions taken today have implications for future generations who are not involved in these decisions, and who may not benefit from current policies. The prime example is climate change, most impacts of which are expected to fully manifest themselves only decades from now. This raises the complex question of accountability relationships between present and future generations, one that calls for novel and potentially unprecedented innovations in governance arrangements. Temporal interdependence also relates to accountability relations between past and present generations. In climate governance, advocates and governments from the less industrialized countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America have submitted claims about the historical responsibility of European and North American societies, which have in the past – yet generally without involvement of present generations – emitted greenhouse gases to an extent that may now force limitations in emissions growth upon poor developing countries. This raises the question whether present Northern societies can be held accountable for past emissions. Long-term historical responsibility of countries is not unknown to international law; for example, national debt or war reparations normally remain the legal responsibility of a country even if most inhabitants were not born when these responsibilities were incurred. If so, we posit here that the normative implications of temporal interdependence in earth system governance, and the specific accountability and legitimacy challenges this poses, merit much more sustained analytical attention. 3.5. Extreme Events Earth system governance has to contend, finally, with the tremendous consequences that governance failure might bring. In particular the current stalemate in international climate negotiations has given rise to an increasingly alarmist discourse about the need to prepare for a global warming that exceeds 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial

4. Assessing the Accountability and Legitimacy of Earth System Governance With these challenges in mind, we turn next to how accountability and legitimacy in earth system governance is being operationalized in practice. Drawing on the contributions to this special section, we address, first, the relational nature of accountability and legitimacy in practice (a concern with input legitimacy); and second, the links between accountability, legitimacy and perceived effectiveness of governance arrangements, that is, output legitimacy. 4.1. Accountability and Legitimacy as Relational: To Whom and How?

F. Biermann, A. Gupta / Ecological Economics 70 (2011) 1856–1864

This is also evident from the transnational partnerships under the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, which reveal a large variation in the extent to which different stakeholder groups are effectively included and the resultant consequences for legitimacy and effectiveness. In the case of water partnerships, it appears that the traditionally dominant role of international organizations, governments and multinational corporations in global rule-making is reproduced in these transnational partnerships, with very little involvement of traditionally under-represented communities, contrary to the claims made by proponents of such partnerships (Dellas, 2011-this issue). In this instance, exclusion of these communities may reduce perceptions of legitimacy in their eyes but may well help to secure it for those who benefit from others’ exclusion. As such, the social construct of a stakeholder, who has the power to designate someone as such, and how stakeholders interact with decisionmaking fora are fundamental questions in analyses of legitimacy and accountability relations in global environmental governance, to which we also return in discussing reform options below. 4.2. Tensions and Synergies Between Accountability, Legitimacy and Effectiveness We turn next to the second main element in the study of accountability and legitimacy, which has been designated output legitimacy — that governance mechanisms are accepted as legitimate as long as they are perceived to be fulfilling the policy goals that they were created for, regardless of the quality and inclusiveness of decision-making. This raises two issues: first, is output legitimacy being secured in practice; and second, do perceptions of greater accountability and legitimacy also influence performance, i.e. are there links and trade-offs between input and output legitimacy? This latter question is important, given a general assumption in the literature is that governance will be more effective when its rules and representatives are perceived as accountable and legitimate. Many governance mechanisms and arrangements – particularly in private and public–private cooperation – have thus sought to establish accountability systems and thereby enhance not only governance legitimacy but also effectiveness. Several contributions to this special section explore this posited connection between legitimacy and performance. Mitchell's contribution, for example, explicitly addresses the varying conditions under which transparency-based policies can enhance governance effectiveness, and whether the perceived accountability and legitimacy of such policies has a prominent role to play in determining effectiveness. In analyzing this, he draws on the important distinction in political science between a logic of consequences and a logic of appropriateness in explaining behavioural change. His novel contribution is to show that, under certain conditions, a logic of appropriateness grounded in widely accepted notions of legitimacy and accountability, can drive improved performance. Yet, as he suggests, the conditions under which this may occur remain crucial to elaborate, to avoid making a too-quick link between legitimacy and effectiveness of transparency-based policies. The preliminary assessment of the performance of public private partnerships in the water sector points, in contrast, to trade-offs between input and output legitimacy, for example between the need for broad stakeholder consultations and speedy implementation of partnership objectives (Dellas, 2011-this issue). In contrast, perceptions of output legitimacy of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil seem to rely more on whether participants are included in the initiative or not, with those participating in it seeing it as legitimate not only because of their own participation but also because of its perceived achievements, while stakeholders who remain outside have a negative view of its (input and) output legitimacy (Schouten and Glasbergen, 2011-this issue). Another interesting case is that of the clean development mechanism under the climate convention. As Lederer argues, the CDM has seemingly high degrees of output legitimacy but far more limited input

1861

legitimacy in the eyes of many, given that it has managed to further climate mitigation goals in certain instances but not necessarily in a manner that is seen as inclusive or legitimate. From this, lessons can be derived for the legitimacy challenges and trade-offs with effectiveness that might stymie new governance innovations, such as reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). Lederer suggests, in particular, that input legitimacy might be more critically important for REDD than it has been for the CDM, in order to ensure governance success (Lederer, 2011-this issue). Rosendal and Andresen (2011-this issue) also address REDD governance, in this case drawing lessons for REDD from the perceived legitimacy and effectiveness of the Global Environment Facility's globally-mandated climate and biodiversity funding activities. In analyzing factors shaping perceptions of GEF legitimacy and effectiveness, they show that the output legitimacy of the Global Environment Facility may be hampered by the fact that its funding activities do not always target key concerns of poorer developing countries, with the exception of its small grants programme. Thus, they argue that the functioning of the small grants programme can provide lessons for how to enhance both input and output legitimacy of newly emerging REDD arrangements. Yet here again, it is clear that the governance objectives of REDD, still very much under debate, will determine the breadth of those to whom REDD arrangements are to be accountable and for whom it must be perceived as effective. The seven contributions to this special section – some of which are more conceptual than empirical – cannot substitute for in-depth comparative research on the effects of different governance arrangements and institutional designs on the accountability and legitimacy of earth system governance; and on the extent to which they might yield both more democratic and more effective governance. The propositions advanced in them, however, do provide intriguing empirical material to further develop such a comparative research programme, in order to systematically assess the accountability and legitimacy implications of different governance mechanisms. We turn next to possible reform options that flow from the identified inadequacies of the present system, also as highlighted in these contributions. 5. Looking Ahead: Options for Governance Reform All contributions to this special section show that earth system transformation and global environmental change pose particular challenges for the accountability and legitimacy of governance. This challenge is important for both intergovernmental and nongovernmental rulemaking. In this section, we explore a number of reform strategies currently employed, or debated, to increase the accountability and legitimacy of governance mechanisms, both public and private. This final section hence contributes to debates on ways to enhance what Dryzek and Stevenson (2011-this issue) call metadeliberation, which is still weak in earth system governance. 5.1. Public and Private Governance: Ensuring Inclusion of Competing Perspectives A first practical challenge is the design of governance institutions that guarantee balanced inclusion of diverse perspectives, including appropriate representation of actors from North and South. Certain private governance initiatives lead the way here in devising innovative procedural and organizational arrangements that ensure inclusion of varied interests and perspectives. Many transnational organizations today employ systems of decision-making that give equal weight to representatives of industrialized and developing countries. North-South quotas are common, for instance, in meetings and alliances of non-state activists affiliated with the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. In addition, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a form of institutionalized participation of non-state actors in earth system governance, serves as a model for effective

1862

F. Biermann, A. Gupta / Ecological Economics 70 (2011) 1856–1864

participation of both developing countries and non-state actors from the South (Biermann, 2002). When the panel was set up in 1988, only few experts from developing countries were involved, with adverse consequences for legitmacy. A number of reforms since 1989 led to the institutionalized inclusion of experts from the South. For example, current rules of procedure now require each working group of scientists to be chaired by one developed and one developing country scientist. The governance structure of this network of scientists now has a quota system that rather resembles public political bodies such as the meetings of parties to the Montreal Protocol, the executive committee of the ozone fund (Biermann, 1997) or the Global Environment Facility (Rosendal and Andresen, 2011-this issue), all of which are governed by North–South parity procedures. North–South quotas are also part of the decision-making of other prominent transnational organizations such as the Forest Stewardship Council (Pattberg, 2006), while such quotas are conspicuously missing in, for example, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (Schouten and Glasbergen, 2011-this issue). In addition to North–South parity, private governance initiatives have also experimented with delimitation of constituencies within civil society. For example, in the Forest Stewardship Council and the Marine Stewardship Council, stakeholders such as business or environmentalist groups have been organized in separate voting chambers. The Forest Stewardship Council has three chambers, for environmental, social, and economic interests, further sub-divided in Northern and Southern chambers (Pattberg, 2006; Chan and Pattberg, 2008). The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil recognizes even more constituencies in its decision-making process, including: oil palm growers; palm oil processors or traders; consumer goods manufacturers; retailers; banks and investors; environmental advocacy organizations; and social and development advocacy organizations (Schouten and Glasbergen, 2011-this issue). In most transnational organizations, all these constituencies have the right to vote, even though at times votes are weighted either explicitly or by overrepresenting certain interests by setting up several constituencies with similar interests on core issues (for example, creating several business-oriented constituencies). In addition to the above experiments in enhancing input legitimacy of public and private initiatives, another proposal to increase the input legitimacy of norm-setting processes in earth system governance has been developed by Baber and Bartlett (2009). They have argued for a global deliberative process – linked to notions of common law – that would generate global norms for earth system governance based on deliberations of numerous citizen juries all over the world. Their claim is that such a series of citizen juries could help ascertain globally acceptable norms in contested areas of earth system governance. As Baber and Bartlett argue, even if the deliberations of the global network of citizen juries do not result in binding law, its normative force, if grounded in a sufficient numbers of professionally run citizen juries, could be substantial. Even as such reform options should be entertained, however, the structural global power inequalities within which citizen deliberations would occur needs to be kept in mind. Spagnuolo (2011-this issue) drives home this point in highlighting the risk of Northern biases in the interpretation and application of presumed universally valid administrative law tenets in a global context. 5.2. Civil Society Representation in Intergovernmental Institutions The legitimacy and accountability of earth system governance might also be improved by reforms within the intergovernmental governance system. Intergovernmental decision-making facilitated by international organizations and global conferences is often driven by the national bureaucracies of nation-states. Even as heads of governments, diplomats, and ministerial bureaucrats generally remain accountable to their domestic constituencies within the rules of their domestic political systems, the influence in intergov-

ernmental fora of minority positions within their countries is often low. In particular, environmentalist views, interests of future generations, and the interests of less powerful nations are marginalized (see also Spagnuolo, 2011-this issue). Such problems could be readdressed by opening up the intergovernmental system to institutionalized balanced involvement of nonstate actors. One long-standing example is the representation of labor unions and employers associations in the International Labor Organization (ILO), which could serve as a model for achieving a balance in participation of private actors from North and South in intergovernmental processes. In the ILO, each state is represented with four votes, two of which are assigned to governments and one each to business associations and labor unions. The ILO procedure, if adopted for environmental institutions, would attend to the basic problem of private participation in global environmental governance — namely that environmental groups can often not adequately compete with the financial power of business associations, and non-state organizations of developing countries lack standing vis-à-vis the financially wellendowed organizations of industrialized countries. An ILO-type structure would grant business interests and environmental interests formally equal rights, and it would guarantee that the Southern nongovernmental associations would have an influence in accordance with the populations represented by them. The ILO formula is far from perfect, in particular given the higher degree of complexity of environmental policy compared to the ILO's more clear-cut “business versus labor”-type of conflicts. Yet, the ILO experience provides a conceptual model along the lines of which more equitable participation of civil society in earth system governance could be developed. Another option to enhance non-state actor involvement in intergovernmental processes is a “quasi-corporatist” institutionalization of such participation (Spiro, 1994). The Commission on Global Governance proposed establishment of an international Forum of Civil Society within the United Nations, which would comprise of 300–600 “organs of global civil society” (Commission on Global Governance, 1995: 258) to be self-selected from civil society. Such models are conceivable also as chambers of specialized UN agencies, including the UN Environment Programme or even a future world environment organization (Biermann, 2000). Some far-reaching proposals even envisage a global parliamentarian assembly, which would bring together parliamentarians from all over the world (Commission on Global Governance, 1995: 257). The double identity of the parliamentarians – as members of their national parliament and of the world parliament – could guarantee some feedback across scales of negotiation and decision-making. Again, parliamentarian chambers could also be included in specialized institutions of earth system governance. Another development in the organization of caucuses of civil society at the international level is the emergence of (currently) nine “major groups” (business, indigenous people, women, etc.) of civil society organizations within the United Nations. These groupings have emerged since the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, when traditional concepts such as “non-governmental organizations” became less relevant in presenting common positions of civil society and when traditional UN approaches – such as different categories of non-governmental organizations based on their scope of interest – proved increasingly irrelevant. However, just as the emergence of interest representation in transnational organizations is in many ways debatable, the development of nine “major groups” in the UN system also invites scrutiny. For example, while “farmers” are represented, fishers are not. While “indigenous people” are included as one major group, many comparable interest groups – for instance the urban poor – are not. While “youth” and “women” are included, the elderly or men are not. These experiments remain limited in their impact, and even so, the resistance to them from countries – notably those that rely on autocratic steering modes – is often predictably strong. Nonetheless, the parallel developments of increased reliance on global decision-making – not least in the climate arena – and decreasing

F. Biermann, A. Gupta / Ecological Economics 70 (2011) 1856–1864

legitimacy of these rule-making settings, makes it ever more necessary to explore options for better civil-society representation within them. 5.3. Qualified Majority Voting in Intergovernmental Rule-setting Institutions Finally, the legitimacy and accountability of intergovernmental decision-making for earth system governance is affected also by consensus requirements in many intergovernmental norm-setting institutions. These consensus rules are often more a matter of practice than of written rules — many international treaties in fact allow for majority voting. However, consensus remains a widely adhered to decision rule, even though the relative power of an objecting country remains decisive in practice. Consensus rules maximize the procedural legitimacy of intergovernmental decision-making by giving all participating countries a voice. However, this increase in input legitimacy can reduce the overall performance and output legitimacy of the decision-making system. The collective accountability of governments in global decision-making hinges on the veto powers of a few countries that seek special benefits, pursue minority political agendas, or reap economic benefit from nondecisions and a persistence of the status quo. Effective decision-making in earth system governance is hence hampered, and the accountability and legitimacy of global decision making vis-à-vis the interests of the vast majority of humankind reduced. One way forward in making the global decision-making system more legitimate and accountable for the vast majority of humankind could be stronger reliance on qualified systems of majority voting in intergovernmental arenas. Majority-voting was for instance formally proposed by Papua New Guinea in the 2009 conference of the parties to the climate convention, which relies de facto on consensus-based decision-making (Dryzek and Stevenson, 2011-this issue). Traditionally, majority voting has suffered from the deficiencies of two main systems, the UN system of “one country, one vote” that effectually grants developing countries a two-thirds and later threefourth majority in the UN General Assembly and related institutions, and the economically-based system of the Bretton Woods institutions (“one dollar, one vote”) that results in a dominance of the largest industrialized countries. Since both systems grant a structural majority to either side of the long-standing North–South cleavage, both lack universal acceptance and legitimacy for far-reaching decisions. One important alternative is the novel system first developed in the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, where decisions require a two-thirds majority of all parties that must include a simple majority of developing countries and a simple majority of industrialized countries. This system negated the veto power of single countries in both North and South, while granting both groups effective veto rights. This voting system governs both the development of the ozone protocol and the implementation of the international fund set up to reimburse the full incremental costs incurred by developing countries in implementing the agreement. A similar system was adopted by the Global Environment Facility in 1994 (Rosendal and Andresen, 2011-this issue). 6. Conclusion Steering human societies towards preventing, mitigating, and adapting to environmental change and earth system transformation is one of the central political challenges of our time. The accountability, legitimacy, and democratic quality of these governance processes is a vital component of this challenge, and has been identified as one of the five core analytical problems in this field (Biermann et al., 2009, 2010). This special section of Ecological Economics has focused on the challenges of securing accountable and legitimate earth system governance. We have argued that earth system transformation poses particular challenges for the accountability and legitimacy of

1863

decision making, requiring unique and innovative analytical approaches and political strategies. The contributions to this special section reveal substantial variation in existing governance arrangements and innovations in terms of their legitimacy, accountability and democratic quality. They also emphasize that the analytical problem of accountability and legitimacy needs to be accompanied by research on concrete options for political reform. In concluding, we have thus outlined some ways in which earth system governance could be made more legitimate and accountable, namely through more balanced inclusion of competing perspectives in both private and public governance, through a more institutionalized involvement of civil society representatives in intergovernmental decision-making, through the introduction of qualified majority-voting in global policy-making arenas, and possibly even through a global network of norm-generating citizen juries. The political feasibility of such proposals remains, of course, an open question. A key conclusion of this special section is that, despite all efforts to date, the study of the accountability, legitimacy, and democratic quality of earth system governance is still in its infancy. More academic and policy-oriented research is clearly needed. We hope that this special section can contribute to further advancing this vital debate. References Baber, W.F., Bartlett, R.V., 2009. Global democracy and sustainable jurisprudence. Deliberative Environmental Law. MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass). Bernstein, S., 2005. Legitimacy in global environmental governance. Journal of International Law and International Relations 1 (1–2), 139–166. Biermann, F., 1997. Financing environmental policies in the South. Experiences from the Multilateral Ozone Fund. International Environmental Affairs 9 (3), 179–219. Biermann, F., 2000. The case for a world environment organization. Environment 42 (9), 22–31. Biermann, F., 2001. Big science, small impacts — in the South? The influence of global environmental assessments on expert communities in India. Global Environmental Change: Human and Policy Dimensions 11 (4), 297–309. Biermann, F., 2002. Institutions for scientific advice. Global environmental assessments and their influence in developing countries. Global Governance 8 (2), 195–219. Biermann, F., 2007. “Earth system governance” as a crosscutting theme of global change research. Global Environmental Change. Human and Policy Dimensions 17, 326–337. Biermann, F., Betsill, M.M., Gupta, J., Kanie, N., Lebel, L., Liverman, D., Schroeder, H., Siebenhüner, B., with contributions from Conca, K., da Costa Ferreira, L., Desai, B., Tay, S., Zondervan, R, 2009. Earth System Governance: People, Places and the Planet. Science and Implementation Plan of the Earth System Governance Project. Earth System Governance Report 1, IHDP Report 20. Bonn, IHDP: The Earth System Governance Project. Available at www.earthsystemgovernance.org 2009. Biermann, F., Betsill, M.M., Gupta, J., Kanie, N., Lebel, L., Liverman, D., Schroeder, H., Siebenhüner, B., Zondervan, R., 2010. Earth system governance. A research framework. International Environmental Agreements 10 (4), 277–288. Chan, S., Pattberg, P., 2008. Private rule-making and the politics of accountability. Analyzing global forest governance. Global Environmental Politics 8 (3), 103–121. Commission on Global Governance, 1995. Our global neighbourhood. The Report of the Commission on Global Governance. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Dellas, E., 2011. CSD Water Partnerships: Privatization, Participation and Legitimacy. Ecological Economics 70, 1916–1923 (this issue). Dingwerth, K., 2005. The democratic legitimacy of public–private rule-making. What can we learn from the World Commission on Dams? Global Governance 11 (1), 65–83. Dingwerth, K., 2007. The New Transnationalism. Transnational Governance and Democratic Legitimacy. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Dryzek, J., Stevenson, H., 2011. Democracy and global earth system governance. Ecological Economics 70, 1865–1874 (this issue). Florini, A., 2007. The Right to Know: Transparency for an Open World. Columbia University Press, New York (NY). Fung, A., Graham, M., Weil, D., 2007. Full Disclosure. The Perils and Promise of Transparency. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (Engl.). Gupta, A., 2008. Transparency under scrutiny. Information disclosure in global environmental governance. Global Environmental Politics 8 (2), 1–7. Gupta, A., 2010a. Transparency in global environmental governance: a coming of age? Global Environmental Politics 10 (3), 1–9. Gupta, A., 2010b. Transparency as contested political terrain: who knows what about the global GMO trade and why does it matter? Global Environmental Politics 10 (3), 32–52. Gupta, A., 2010c. Transparency to what end? Governing by disclosure through the biosafety clearing house. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 28 (1), 128–144. Jansen, K., Gupta, A., 2009. Anticipating the future: ‘biotechnology for the poor’ as unrealized promise? Futures 41, 436–445. Keohane, R., 2003. Global governance and democratic accountability. In: Held, David, Koenig-Archbugi, Mathias (Eds.), Taming Globalization. Frontiers of Governance. Polity, Cambridge, pp. 130–159.

1864

F. Biermann, A. Gupta / Ecological Economics 70 (2011) 1856–1864

Kingsbury, B., 2007. Global environmental governance as administration: Implications for international law. In: Bodansky, D., Brunnée, J., Hey, E. (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 63–84. Lederer, M., 2011. From CDM to REDD: What do we know about setting up effective and legitimate carbon governance? Ecological Economics 70, 1900–1907 (this issue). Mason, M.R., 2008. The governance of transnational environmental harm: addressing new modes of accountability/responsibility. Global Environmental Politics 8 (3), 8–24. Mitchell, R.B., 2011. Transparency for governance. The mechanisms and effectiveness of disclosure-based and education-based transparency policies. Ecological Economics 70, 1882–1890 (this issue). Pattberg, P., 2005. The institutionalization of private governance: How business and non-profits agree on transnational rules. Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions 18 (4), 589–610. Pattberg, P., 2006. Private governance and the South. Lessons from global forest politics. Third World Quarterly 27, 579–593.

Rosendal, G.K., Andresen, S., 2011. Improved forest governance through REDD: Lessons from legitimacy and effectiveness of the Global Environment Facility. Ecological Economics 70, 1908–1915 (this issue). Scharpf, F.W., 1997. Economic integration, democracy and the welfare state. Journal of European Public Policy 4, 18–36. Schouten, G., Glasbergen, P., 2011. Creating legitimacy in global private governance. The case of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. Ecological Economics 70, 1891–1899 (this issue). Spagnuolo, F., 2011. Diversity and pluralism in earth system governance: contemplating the role for global administrative law. Ecological Economics 70, 1875–1881 (this issue). P.J.Spiro, P.J., 1994. New global communities. Nongovernmental organizations in international decision-making institutions. The Washington Quarterly 18 (1), 45–56. Zografos, C., Howarth, R.B. (Eds.). Deliberative Ecological Economics. Oxford University Press.