Institutional Interaction in Global Environmental Governance: Synergy and Conflict among International and EU Policies (MIT Press 2006, US$ 28)

Sebastian Oberthür and Thomas Gehring (eds.)

This systematic investigation of the interaction among international and European institutions provides both a theoretical framework for analysis and the first broad overview of this largely uncharted field of research. By offering detailed case studies and a systematic analysis of results, the book examines the effects of institutional interaction on environmental governance and explores the ways in which international and European Union policies can either reinforce or undercut one another. After a conceptual overview in which Oberthür and Gehring identify three causal mechanisms by which institutional interaction can affect environmental governance, ten case studies apply this theoretical approach. Six cases use an international institution as their starting point and four begin with a European Union legal instrument. The international regimes examined include the widely known Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and World Trade Organization and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The EU instruments analyzed include lesser-known directives on the protection of habitats, the deliberate release of genetically modified organisms into the environment, and air quality. The studies show that although conflict and interference among different regimes and institutions do take place, synergistic interactions are common. The findings on the importance of, and mechanisms behind, these outcomes offer valuable insights for both scholars and policymakers.

"There is new compulsory reading for the international environmental governance community: this groundbreaking collection demonstrates convincingly that we must devote more systematic attention to institutional interaction. In addition, its findings suggest that interplay and overlap among institutions have far more positive potential than the conventional wisdom about proliferating regimes would allow."
- Jutta Brunnée Metcalf, Chair in Environmental Law, University of Toronto

"This exciting collection marks a new frontier in the study of global environmental governance: the causal mechanisms associated with institutional interplay. The authors tease out the educational and institutional means by which governance is affected by such interplay, both within environmental arrangements and between environment and political economy."
- Peter M. Haas, Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts

Table of Contents

Contents
Foreword by Oran R. Young
Acknowledgments
Contributors
List of Abbreviations

1 Introduction
Thomas Gehring and Sebastian Oberthür

2 Conceptual Foundations of Institutional Interaction
Sebastian Oberthür and Thomas Gehring

3 The Climate Change Regime: Interactions with ICAO, IMO, and the EU
Burden-Sharing Agreement
Sebastian Oberthür

4 The Convention on Biological Diversity: Tensions with the WTO TRIPS
Agreement over Access to Genetic Resources and the Sharing of Benefits
G. Kristin Rosendal

5 Protecting the North-East Atlantic: One Problem, Three Institutions
Jon Birger Skjærseth

6 Institutional Interplay and Responsible Fisheries: Combating Subsidies,
Developing Precaution
Olav Schram Stokke and Clare Coffey

7 The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna
and Flora (CITES): Responding to Calls for Action from Other Nature
Conservation Regimes
John Lanchbery

8 Interactions between the World Trade Organization and International
Environmental Regimes
Alice Palmer, Beatrice Chaytor and Jacob Werksman

9 Interactions of EU Legal Instruments Establishing Broad Principles of
Environmental Management: The Water Framework Directive and the IPPC
Directive
Andrew Farmer

10 The EU Habitats Directive: Enhancing Synergy with Pan-European Nature
Conservation and with the EU Structural Funds
Clare Coffey

11 The EU Deliberate Release Directive: Environmental Precaution versus
Trade and Product Regulation
Ingmar von Homeyer

12 The EU Air Quality Framework Directive: Shaped and Saved by Interaction?
Jørgen Wettestad and Andrew Farmer

13 Comparative Empirical Analysis and Ideal Types of Institutional
Interaction
Thomas Gehring and Sebastian Oberthür