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Greening the United Nations: Future Conditional?

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Book cover Between Sovereignty and Global Governance

Abstract

Conventional wisdom on the pursuit of environmental security suggests two things: first, that it can be achieved through better or even global governance, and second, that the United Nations is best placed to provide this improved governance. These have become axioms, little explored or challenged. It seems appropriate, then, to consider how the United Nations has grappled with an issue which simply was not a matter for international concern SO years ago and which was not incorporated in the UN’s mandate. This chapter begins with a brief survey of the environmental agenda and then proceeds to examine the ]global governance debate through an analysis of the ‘inadequate state’, the critique of sovereignty and the imperatives for comprehensive security. The second section of the chapter explores the way in which environmental security issues have been pursued within the United Nations, with an emphasis on the UNCED process. The third section provides a critical analysis of those processes and explores proposals for reforming the United Nations to make it more receptive to the imperatives of environmental security. The final section returns to the themes of sovereignty and global governance, suggesting that within the UN system, global environmental governance may well be little more than sovereignty with a kinder, gentler face and therefore, limited as a framework or informing paradigm for achieving environmental security.

Is the international community as it exists ... capable of action within the available time? There is hardly reason for optimism. The world is divided into sovereign states that are not willing to give up their formal freedom of action.1

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Notes

  1. Sverker Astr öm, Swedish Ambassador to the UN, made this observation when, in 1968, he proposed on behalf of the Swedish government that the UN hold an international conference on environmental issues (the 1972 Stockholm Conference) (see Wade Rowland The Plot to Save the World: The Life and Times of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, Toronto: Clarke, Irwin A Co, 1973 p. 33.

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Authors
  1. Lorraine Elliott
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. La Trobe University, Australia

    Albert J. Paolini (Former Assistant Lecturer in International Relations) & Anthony P. Jarvis (Lecturer in International Relations) (Former Assistant Lecturer in International Relations) &  (Lecturer in International Relations)

  2. Monash University, Australia

    Christian Reus-Smit (Lecturer in International Relations) (Lecturer in International Relations)

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© 1998 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Elliott, L. (1998). Greening the United Nations: Future Conditional?. In: Paolini, A.J., Jarvis, A.P., Reus-Smit, C. (eds) Between Sovereignty and Global Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14342-9_7

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