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Task Force on Accountability in Global Environmental Governance

Description

The Earth System Governance Task Force on Accountability in Global Environmental Governance (AGEG) has built a research program on how to assess (and ultimately ensure) the accountability of global environmental governance.

The research program seeks:

  • To create a coherent theoretical framework to investigate the nature of accountability in global environmental governance;
  • To examine whether accountability gaps exist across environmental cases within the framework; and
  • To identify whether these gaps constitute a governance problem and can be ameliorated.

 

Upcoming Panel at the International Studies Association Annual Convention

San Francisco, Wednesday, April 4, 4:00 PM – 5:45 PM 

Ruling Out Socially, Environmentally, and Economically-Destructive Extractives? The Power of “Environmentalism” and Anti-Extractivism in Comparative Perspective

Read more here.

Workshop participants, University of Sydney, December 2015
Workshop participants, University of Sydney, December 2015

Publications

Kramarz, Teresa, Susan Park. 2017. Special Issue: The Politics of Environmental Accountability, Review of Policy Research, 34:1.

Teresa Kramarz. 2016. When courts go green. Latin America  Goes Global.

Teresa Kramarz. 2016. Making climate agreements accountable to the world’s most vulnerable communities. OpenCanada.org blog.

Park, Susan. 2016. Blog: Making Environmental Issues Accountable

Kramarz, Teresa, Susan Park. 2015. Accountability in Global Environmental Governance – Workshop Report.

Buntaine, Mark T. 2015. Accountability in Global Governance: Civil Society Claims for Environmental Performance at the World Bank. International Studies Quarterly (2015) 59, 99–111

Upcoming activities

2018 Summer Institute on Critical Studies of Environmental Governance.

Previous activities

Workshop on “Accountability in Global Environmental Governance” in Sydney, December 2015.

Workshop within the framework of the ISA Annual Convention 2015.

Panel session at the 2014 Norwich Conference on Earth System Governance in July 2014

Roundtable at the ISA Annual Convention 2014.

Inaugural workshop hosted by the Global Environmental Governance Lab at the University of Toronto

Context

The system of global environmental governance (GEG) has been riddled by fragmentation and duplication of efforts, dispersed political authority and weak regulatory influence. The inefficiency of the system has been matched by a growing concern over the future provision of global public goods. A widening gap between capacities and needs has created rising demands for accountability from institutions, to principals and constituencies on the ground. Yet, GEG has been characterized by a culture of unaccountability.

Teresa Kramarz (University of Toronto) and Susan Park (University of Sydney) established AGEG to promote collaborative research on the accountability of global environmental governance by bringing together scholars with intimate knowledge of key environmental regimes (air, water, forests, energy and climate) along with scholars of global institutions (the United Nations Environmental Program, the World Bank and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change among others). In November, the network became a Task Force in the Earth System Governance Global Research Alliance.

Policy Relevance

AGEG envisages creating a unified approach to tracing accountability across global environmental governance which can be applied by all scholars irrespective of issue area or institution. This will be of use to all scholars of the sub-field of global environmental politics and international relations more generally. It will also be of use to national policy makers in negotiations of key global environmental treaties as they determine the best design of global institutions that are mandated to fulfill treaty obligations. The AGEG research network will engage with the conceptual framework established at the inaugural roundtable to identify the accountability chains in their respective environmental regimes (such as climate change). This will be used to identify to whom and for what the environmental regimes are answerable and if they can be made more accountable. This is the first global approach to understanding and mapping accountability in global environmental governance.

Who we are:

This network is an international collaboration of leading scholars in the sub-field of global environmental politics, led by Teresa Kramarz, at the University of Toronto and Susan Park, at the University of Sydney. The research group brings together 30 senior and junior scholars from prestigious universities in developed and developing countries across North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.

AGEG

 

Aaron Soto-Karlin
Aarti Gupta, Wageningen University
Alejandro Rossi, Ecojure
Allison Chatrchyan, Cornell University
Angel Hsu, Yale University
Aseem Prakash, University of Washington
Bunlong Leng, University of Melbourne
Ben Cashore, Yale University
Benjamin Donato-Woodger, University of Toronto
Benjamin Liadsky, University of Northern British Colombia
Beth Edmondson, Federation University
Carole-Anne Senit, Utrecht University
Christopher Gore, Ryerson University
Craig Harris, Michigan State University
Craig Johnson, University of Guelph
Cristina Balboa, Yale University
David Cosolo, University of Toronto
David Downie, Fairfield University
David Gordon, University of Toronto
David Schlosberg, University of Sydney
Diarmuid Torney, Dublin City University
Eduardo Rolon, Causa Natura
Frank Biermann, Utrecht University
Geoff Dabelko, Ohio University
Hamzat Lawal
Harro van Asselt, University of Eastern Finland
Hayley Stevenson, University of Sheffield
Heike Schroeder, University of East Anglia
Hilco van Elten, University of Groningen
Howard S Schiffman, New York University
James Van Alstine, University of Leeds
Javiera Barandiaran, UCSB
Jennifer Clapp, University of Waterloo
Jennifer Goldstein, Cornell University
Jessie Connell, University of Sydney
Johannes Kruse, University of Bremen
John Didacus Njoku, Federal University of Technology Owerri
John Dryzek, University of Canberra
Jonathan Rosenberg
Jonathan Kuyper, Stockholm University
Judith van Leeuwen, Wageningen University
Kai Sun, Nanjing University
Karin Backstrand, Stockholm University
Kristen Pue, University of Toronto
Kyla Tienhaara, Australian National University
Lars Gulbrandsen, Fridtjof Nansen Institute
Leah Stokes, MIT
Lena Partzsch, University of Erfurt
Lorraine Elliott, Australian National University
Lynn Wagner, International Institute for Sustainable Development
Marc Williams, University of New South Wales
Maria Ivanova, University of Massachusetts
Mark Buntaine, University of California, Santa Barbara
Matt Hoffmann, University of Toronto
Michael MacLeod, Saint Mary’s University, Canada
Michael Mason, London School of Economics
Michelle Scobie, University of the West Indies
Nafiseh Jafarzadeh, Macquarie University
Adil Najam, Boston University
Nick Enfield, University of Sydney
Oscar Widerberg, VU University
Philipp Pattberg, VU University
Pichamon (May) Yeophantong, University of New South Wales
Ritwick Ghosh, Cornell University
Robert MacNeil, University of Sydney
Ruben Zondervan, Earth System Governance Project, and Lund University
Shana Starobin, Penn State
Sherrie Baver, CUNY Graduate Center
Sokphea Young, University of Melbourne
Stefan Renckens, University of Toronto
Steven Wolf, Cornell University
Steven Bernstein, University of Toronto
Susan Park, University of Sydney
Teresa Kramarz, University of Toronto
Tracy-Ann Hyman, University of the West Indies

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