ABSTRACT
The complex and transboundary nature of current environmental problems are now truly global issues that involve highly intermingled issues of ecology, economics and politics. The sectoral, fragmented and predominantly ad hoc development of institutions to address these global problems has proved inadequate and has done little to address their deeply entrenched causes and often even their symptoms. While the problems are indisputably global in nature, contrastingly, their solutions have so far been predominantly sought in the limited and traditional framework of a geopolitical system founded upon the individual sovereignty of states.1
