Intergovernmental Environmental Organizations and Initiatives

The Role of the United Nations

Various organizations within the UN play roles in global environmental governance. The most [Page 1604]central of these is the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), a specialized agency of the UN, founded in 1972. UNEP's mission is to play a catalytic role in environmental governance, coordinating environmental efforts by other UN agencies. It has played active roles in environmental monitoring and scientific research on environmental issues and has coordinated and supported the negotiation of international environmental agreements or conventions (treaties). It has also undertaken specific programs to address international environmental issues. Notable among these is its regional seas program, which has negotiated agreements involving 140 states to protect 13 regional seas.

The UN has also held major international conferences on issues relating to environmental issues. The two most influential of these conferences were the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE), held in 1972 in Stockholm, and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. UNCHE involved representatives from 113 states and numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It produced a Declaration, an Action Plan, and several resolutions, including one that advocated the creation of UNEP.

UNCED focused on the relationship between environment and development. It was attended by representatives of 178 states and featured a parallel “Global Forum” where representatives of 1,500 NGOs met. The conference reiterated the right of states to development and to sovereignty over their natural resources and prioritized the generation of additional financial resources to assist countries with environment and development needs.

Other UN environmental initiatives are worth noting. The World Commission on Environment and Development was established in 1983 at UNEP's recommendation. It produced the report Our Common Future in 1987 to give an overview of the difficulties facing the intersecting desires for economic development and environmental protection. The Commission on Sustainable Development was created in 1992 following a recommendation from the Rio Conference. The Millennium Development Goals attempt to improve the lives of people in developing countries in specific ways by 2015. One goal specifies the need to “ensure environmental sustainability.”

International Environmental Organizations

Most intergovernmental environmental cooperation takes place within issue-specific institutions created to address individual environmental problems through specific measures. Each organization has, for the most part, been created through its own negotiation process (usually in the context of a specific treaty). That process results in an anarchic pattern of institutions, where multiple institutions may address different aspects of a given problem or different types of solutions and each organization has a different set of member states.

The earliest intergovernmental institutions focused on what we would now call the sustainable use of species, such as seals, birds, whales, and fish. Different organizations were created to restrict hunting of a given species to a level that would allow reproduction and the indefinite continuation of human use of these resources. These organizations tend to be fairly narrowly focused on a given one or more closely related species, often in a specific region. Examples of existing organizations with this function include the International Whaling Commission and a large number of Regional Fishery Management organizations, which restrict fishing behavior in multiple organizations that focus on species, region, or both.

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