Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
General's report, 207 partnerships had participated in Partnerships Fairs
since their inception.
Given the diversity of attendees, it should not be surprising that
“social networks are fragmented and cross important social cleavages”
(Clemens and Cook 1999, 451). The commission is notorious as a site
where the contentious dimensions of international environmental politics
collide: North versus South, rich versus poor, and the classic balancing
act required between people, prosperity, and planet. Despite such con-
fl icts, the commission and its participants are fl exible and resilient, often
reinventing themselves,
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which is but one indicator that the commission's
“models of action are understood to be discretionary” (Clemens and
Cook 1999, 451). This discretionary nature comes in part from the
nature of soft-law governance, since “the obligatory component is dis-
cretionary” (Emadi-Coffi n 2002). However, the sweeping scope of the
sustainable development project, coupled with the hybrid-governance
character of the UNCSD, builds in discretion at multiple levels.
Therefore, while the UNCSD is a soft-law body with a broad and
sometimes amorphous mandate, these very characteristics increase the
likelihood that nonstate actor interventions can infl uence policies in their
favor. In the area of environmental justice in particular, the institution is
an ideal target. The explicit acknowledgment of the central role of
women, farmers, indigenous peoples, NGOs, and youth in the achieve-
ment of UNCSD goals opens doors that are closed in most venues of
global environmental governance; the explicit acknowledgment that
equity is central to the achievement of sustainable development provides
leverage that does not exist elsewhere (Roberts and Parks 2007).
To facilitate the pursuit of these goals, the UNCSD has developed mul-
tiple mechanisms for the inclusion of nonstate actors, which provide
unprecedented opportunities for social movements to work directly with
governments to craft policies focused on environmental justice.
Points of Improvement for the UNCSD
The policy potential of the UNCSD stems predominately from its open-
ness to vastly broader participation of the Major Groups than is afforded
by other institutions of global environmental governance. Two specifi c
innovations already cited—the Multi-stakeholder Dialogues and the
Partnerships Fairs—are examples of the creative governance that have
prospered at the UNCSD. More recently, however, the innovations have
slowed, and attendance of NGOs and other nonstate actors has declined.
I believe this decline is largely due to a subtle disenfranchisement of
