In this chapter, we will examine the different political or collective decision-making aspects of environmental policy. Our treatment will focus on the political economy of national environmental policy, as there is another chapter by Scott Barrett in this textbook that deals with the issue of international environmental agreements. In addition, our study is more or less limited to countries` experiences with elected governments – particularly the United States and Western European nations. Existing theory and more rigorous empirical work tend to relate to these countries.1 It took 16 years for the World Heritage Convention and the CITIES Conventions, first ratified in the 1970s, to be ratified by more than 100 countries. However, the Kyoto Protocol was first ratified in 1998 and took only five years to reach the same point, and the Paris Agreement (2016) received 121 ratifications in the first year. The Action Programme also includes a priority horizontal objective to help the Union address international environmental and climate challenges more effectively. It recalls that the UNION has a good track record of accession to multilateral environmental agreements and calls on the EU and its Member States to participate proactively in international negotiations on new and emerging issues. The topics covered in these agreements are very broad: biodiversity and nature conservation, climate change, protection of the ozone layer, desertification, chemicals and waste management, transboundary water and air pollution, environmental policy (including impact assessments, access to information and public participation), industrial accidents, maritime and river protection, environmental responsibility. In general, however, BAIs address many different problems in the area of pollution and resource use and can cover local, regional or global scales. Most environmental problems are cross-border and often global, and they can only be effectively solved through international cooperation.
For this reason, the Treaty of Lisbon states that one of the main objectives of EU environmental policy is to promote action at international level to address regional or global environmental problems, and in particular to combat climate change. The Union actively participates in the preparation, ratification and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements. The presence of asymmetries between countries and the incentive for free-ride make it quite unlikely that there will be self-reinforcing global agreements, i.e. profitable and stable for all countries. While there are self-applicable international environmental agreements, they are signed by a limited number of countries. With the adoption of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, most countries are updating their national biodiversity strategies and action plans and integrating national targets under the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. For example, the new Biodiversity Strategy for England sets a target of effectively establishing and managing an ecologically coherent network of marine protected areas by the end of 2016, covering more than 25% of UK waters (compared to Aichi Targets 6 and 11). Norway`s new biodiversity strategy includes a comprehensive set of targets for each of Norway`s six main biomes. Guatemala`s new strategy includes targets to reduce deforestation and restore forests. Colombia has developed a new biodiversity policy focused on preserving and increasing the resilience of ecosystems.
Brazil has developed a comprehensive set of biodiversity targets under the 2010 Global Biodiversity Target. This included the goal of reducing the rate of deforestation in the Amazon biome by at least 75%, a goal that, as mentioned above, has been achieved. After a series of dialogues between the different ministries and sectors of society, Brazil is in the process of developing an updated set of objectives. The term environment is defined in a broad sense. Some agreements include a number of environmental protection measures, while others are extremely specific. The draft database on international environmental agreements divides the agreements into the following environmental categories: In addition, the most important agreements have been grouped below according to the structure of the site plan according to the general environmental themes. The draft Global Pact for the Environment was presented on Saturday 24 June at an event at the Sorbonne in Paris. French President Emmanuel Macron was the closing speaker who pledged to act personally on the basis of the preliminary draft to lay the groundwork for its adoption as a new global pact for environmental conservation by the United Nations General Assembly. To be considered international, the treaty must be intergovernmental; bilateral agreements exist between two Governments and multilateral agreements between more than two. Access the data at the bottom of this page on increasing participation in international environmental agreements. Assessment data from lists of threatened species and changes in the status of threatened species can feed into several other international environmental agreements. For example: Under the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the goal of the Paris Agreement is to keep this century`s global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius.
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