ABSTRACT

The need for environmental governance beyond the level of the state arises in situations where (1) human users exploit common pool resources (e.g. fish, marine mammals, genetic resources) that are located outside the jurisdiction of individual states or move across boundaries of national sovereignty, (2) human activities involve the use of other resources located in international spaces (e.g. deep seabed minerals, the geomagnetic spectrum), (3) environmental externalities have transboundary impacts (e.g. long-range air pollution), and (4) there is a need to protect or enhance ecosystems of international importance (e.g. the stratospheric ozone layer, the climate system). In municipal or domestic systems, we ordinarily turn to governments to fulfill needs for environmental governance. But the anarchic character of international society rules out this approach to the supply of environmental governance beyond the level of the state. This has given rise to a sustained interest in the conditions under which it is possible to meet needs for governance in the absence of a government. Research on “governance without government” is well developed with regard to small-scale settings where face-to-face interaction is common and social norms and culturally embedded practices often provide a basis for addressing needs for governance (Ostrom et al. 2002). As the success of the effort to phase out the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances demonstrates in the case of the ozone regime, meeting needs for governance at the international or global level in the absence of a government is also possible. This realization has triggered a stream of research concerned with needs for governance involving environmental issues and with possible solutions that do not require fundamental changes in the character of international society through, for instance, regional governance systems.