ABSTRACT
Many a book has been written about the state of the world environment. This book will not offer yet another assessment of the global environmental crisis and of the ineffective societal response.1 Instead, this volume will focus on possible reform options for the emerging yet still insufficient system of international environmental governance. In particular, we will discuss one reform proposal that has been around for more than thirty years, but has now received fresh attention: the creation of a 'world environment organization' within the system of the United Nations. Would a world environment organization contribute to the solution of the global environmental crisis-or would it rather hinder progress because it would create new problems instead of solving existing ones, or because setting up a new agency would simply require too many resources with no clear benefit?
