Green Politics: Global Environmental Negotiations 1

THIS VOLUME DESCRIBES the key global environmental issues and critically reviews the international negotiations and institutions that are seeking to address these – but from the perspective of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and focusing especially on the concerns of their poorer citizens. As this book describes, the concerns of such citizens are poorly represented in the environment-related conventions and other global measures taken to address such problems as global warming, desertification, deforestation, the loss of biodiversity and growing concentrations of persistent organic pollutants. Their priorities are often ignored or overlooked as negotiations and institutional responses to them are dominated by the priorities of governments from high-income nations and often strongly influenced by business interests. As the report notes, global environmental negotiations and institutions have slowly been turned into business transactions rather than systems of governance based on democracy, equality and justice.
This volume was produced by the Centre for Science and Environment in India, drawing on a large network of collaborators from around the world. In keeping with its other publications, this is a volume that is easy to read and beautifully presented – from detailed tables, charts and figures to cartoons that highlight key points; and the cartoon on the front of this issue of Environment and Urbanization is drawn from it. The first three chapters cover climate change, biodiversity and desertification and each describes the international convention being developed and the institutions involved. The next three chapters describe international negotiations on persistent organic pollutants, forests and trade and
the environment. These are followed by chapters that provide a critical look at the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment, the Global Environment Facility (which is meant to fund action on global environmental problems) and the evolving institutional framework within the United Nations for addressing environment and development. Each chapter not only describes the issues but also tells the story of how and why governments began to seek international responses to global environmental problems. This makes iy valuable not only for specialists but also for any general reader interested in the most pressing global environmental problems and in the inadequacies and inequities in the means proposed to
address them. A second volume, close to completion, will look at other key parts of global environmental negotiations including the measures taken to control trade in hazardous chemicals and the conventions on international trade in endangered species and whaling, as well as taking a critical look at key institutions such as the Commission on Sustainable Development and the World Bank.