Goeteyn, Nils; Maes, Frank --- "The Quest for a World Environment Organization: Reflections on a Failing Debate as an Input for Future Improvement" [2012] ELECD 274; in Martin, Paul; Zhiping, Li; Tianbao, Qin; Du Plessis, Anel; Le Bouthillier, Yves; Williams, Angela (eds), "Environmental Governance and Sustainability" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Environmental Governance and Sustainability

Editor(s): Martin, Paul; Zhiping, Li; Tianbao, Qin; Du Plessis, Anel; Le Bouthillier, Yves; Williams, Angela

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781000472

Section: Chapter 11

Section Title: The Quest for a World Environment Organization: Reflections on a Failing Debate as an Input for Future Improvement

Author(s): Goeteyn, Nils; Maes, Frank

Number of pages: 15

Extract:

11. The quest for a World Environment
Organization: reflections on a failing
debate as an input for future
improvement
Nils Goeteyn and Frank Maes

11.1 INTRODUCTION

No international organization exists to oversee environmental issues in a
comprehensive and coordinated manner. The form and mandate of the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) were deliberately designed for such
a role, but many observers of the international environmental scene dismiss
UNEP as an institutional failure. Given the deteriorating state of the global
environment and the lack of a politically authoritative body in the field of
environmental policy-making, the idea that a profound institutional overhaul
is needed is a compelling one.
One of the advocated alternatives is the so-called World Environment
Organization (WEO). For the purposes of this chapter, WEO stands for the
concept of a World Environment Organization, without prejudice towards the
many different existing proposals, ranging from a Global Environmental
Organization that would focus on global issues (Esty 1994); a global bargain-
ing marketplace (Whalley and Zissimos 2001a and 2001b); an upgraded
UNEP (among others: Biermann 2000 and 2001); or even a super-sized,
powerful and supranational organization (Downie and Levy 2000); the clus-
tering of MEAs (Oberthür 2002; Von Moltke 2005); or a United Nations
Environment Organization. It represents the idea of a new or reformed inter-
national organization for the environment, in any conceivable form, rather
than observing and critiquing one or more individual existing proposals. What
this new institution should look like, the mandate it ...