Skip to content

Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap

Susan Park and Teresa Kramarz (editors). 2019. Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

Abstract

An examination of whether accountability mechanisms in global environmental governance that focus on monitoring and enforcement necessarily lead to better governance and better environmental outcomes.

The rapid development of global environmental governance has been accompanied by questions of accountability. Efforts to address what has been called “a culture of unaccountability” include greater transparency, public justification for governance decisions, and the establishment of monitoring and enforcement procedures. And yet, as this volume shows, these can lead to an “accountability trap”—a focus on accountability measures rather than improved environmental outcomes. Through analyses and case studies, the contributors consider how accountability is being used within global environmental governance and if the proliferation of accountability tools enables governance to better address global environmental deterioration. Examining public, private, voluntary, and hybrid types of global environmental governance, the volume shows that the different governance goals of the various actors shape the accompanying accountability processes. These goals—from serving constituents to reaping economic benefits—determine to whom and for what the actors must account.

After laying out a theoretical framework for its analyses, the book addresses governance in the key areas of climate change, biodiversity, fisheries, and trade and global value chains. The contributors find that normative biases shape accountability processes, and they explore the potential of feedback mechanisms between institutions and accountability rules for enabling better governance and better environmental outcomes.

Contributors Graeme Auld, Cristina Balboa, Lieke Brouwer, Lorraine Elliott, Lars H. Gulbrandsen, Teresa Kramarz, Susan Park, Philipp Pattberg, William H. Schaedla, Hamish van der Ven, Oscar Widerberg

You might like these publication categories

Recent publications

Earth System Governance – Volume 24

We are delighted to present the twenty-fourth volume of Earth System Governance, the open-access journal for all those interested in…

The Politics and Governance of Decarbonization: The Interplay between State and Non-State Actors in Sweden

This book examines how, and under what conditions, states – in collaboration with non-state actors – can govern a societal…

Sustaining Development in Small Islands: Climate Change, Geopolitical Security, and the Permissive Liberal Order

The viability of small island developing states (SIDS) is threatened by three distinct processes – a backlash against globalisation; rising…