ABSTRACT
With the fading of post-Cold War optimism and the increasingly apparent
inadequacy of responses to global environmental challenges, environmentalists around the world have begun to rethink the international strategies of the
past few decades. Certainly, much has been accomplished to improve certain
elements of international environmental governance. Multilateral agree-
ments have proliferated; international institutions for trade and finance have
begun to take more account of environmental considerations, either proac-
tively or of necessity; many businesses around the world have begun to take
the challenge of sustainability seriously. At the UN, Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon recently appointed former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, former South Korean Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo, and
former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos as special climate change envoys,
to help build the ‘‘institutional framework within which a global solution to
this global problem can be reached’’ (UN 2007). In Europe and Asia, many
new ideas about institutionalizing sustainability have emerged and are being
discussed (Ott 2005, IGES 2005, ADB 2005). In the United States, many
cities and states have sought to assume policy leadership, as a way to
counteract the Bush administration’s inaction and rollback on environmental matters.
