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Institutions for Global Environmental Change
Global Environmental Change 12 (2002) 241–245
Institutions for Global Environmental Change
One of the greatest challenges confronting international regime builders is how to ensure action taken in one issue area is consistent with action taken in cognate areas. With the benefit of hindsight, it is apparent that many international regimes were designed narrowly to address a particular sub-set of problems. In the recent past, inter-regime conflicts have flared with increasing regularity as actions taken in one regime have ‘spilled over’ into another. For instance, the ozone and climate change regimes adopted inconsistent policies to regulate the use of hydrofluorocarbons. Meanwhile, the relationship between the trade regime overseen by the World Trade Organisation and a host of international environmental regimes is still a long way from being satisfactorily worked out. The European Union has taken steps internally to overcome inter-regime conflicts by ensuring that environmental protection requirements are consid-
ered when regimes are first designed. As Andrea Lenschow shows, the policy logic underpinning the Environmental Policy Integration principle is impeccable: environmental problems should be the responsibility of each and every sector, not just ‘the environment’. The political problems arise when environmental sectors/regimes try to persuade ‘non’ environmental sectors/regimes to ‘green’ themselves from within. The author examines the scope for drawing practical lessons from the EU’s experience and applying them to other supranational environmental issues. Andrew Jordan and Tim O’Riordan CSERGE, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK E-mail address: [email protected]
0959-3780/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 5 9 - 3 7 8 0 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 2 0 - 6
‘‘Greening’’ the European UnionFare there lessons to be learned for international environmental policy? Andrea Lenschow Department of Political Science, Salzburg University, Rudolfskai 42, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
1. Introduction The ‘‘greening’’ of economic policy making is becoming a primary challenge in national, European and international politics. The European Union (EU) has made substantial progress in this regard during the past years; but it also continues to face significant obstacles. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Lenschow).
This article explores whether lessons for international politics can be derived from the EU experience. Although there are limits to the comparability between the two levels of governance, there are cognitive, institutional and political aspects to keep in mind for environmental policy integration (EPI) in general. Environmental protection is immensely difficult in a world where the main political actors continue to be sovereign states with internally highly differentiated
0959-3780/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 5 9 - 3 7 8 0 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 2 1 - 8
Institutions for Global Environmental Change
One of the greatest challenges confronting international regime builders is how to ensure action taken in one issue area is consistent with action taken in cognate areas. With the benefit of hindsight, it is apparent that many international regimes were designed narrowly to address a particular sub-set of problems. In the recent past, inter-regime conflicts have flared with increasing regularity as actions taken in one regime have ‘spilled over’ into another. For instance, the ozone and climate change regimes adopted inconsistent policies to regulate the use of hydrofluorocarbons. Meanwhile, the relationship between the trade regime overseen by the World Trade Organisation and a host of international environmental regimes is still a long way from being satisfactorily worked out. The European Union has taken steps internally to overcome inter-regime conflicts by ensuring that environmental protection requirements are consid-
ered when regimes are first designed. As Andrea Lenschow shows, the policy logic underpinning the Environmental Policy Integration principle is impeccable: environmental problems should be the responsibility of each and every sector, not just ‘the environment’. The political problems arise when environmental sectors/regimes try to persuade ‘non’ environmental sectors/regimes to ‘green’ themselves from within. The author examines the scope for drawing practical lessons from the EU’s experience and applying them to other supranational environmental issues. Andrew Jordan and Tim O’Riordan CSERGE, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK E-mail address: [email protected]
0959-3780/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 5 9 - 3 7 8 0 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 2 0 - 6
‘‘Greening’’ the European UnionFare there lessons to be learned for international environmental policy? Andrea Lenschow Department of Political Science, Salzburg University, Rudolfskai 42, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
1. Introduction The ‘‘greening’’ of economic policy making is becoming a primary challenge in national, European and international politics. The European Union (EU) has made substantial progress in this regard during the past years; but it also continues to face significant obstacles. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Lenschow).
This article explores whether lessons for international politics can be derived from the EU experience. Although there are limits to the comparability between the two levels of governance, there are cognitive, institutional and political aspects to keep in mind for environmental policy integration (EPI) in general. Environmental protection is immensely difficult in a world where the main political actors continue to be sovereign states with internally highly differentiated
0959-3780/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 5 9 - 3 7 8 0 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 2 1 - 8