ABSTRACT
There is widespread consensus that the existing structure of international environmental management needs reform and strengthening. The impetus for this consensus is fourfold: First, the creation of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) did not result in the strengthening of international environmental regimes that some may have hoped for. Second, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) to mark the tenth anniversary of UNCED created a deadline against which progress could be measured. Third, the continuing need to develop international responses to the challenges of sustainable development has resulted in a structure that is increasingly complex and widely viewed as inadequate to the growing needs that are associated with it. Fourth, the nexus between international economic and environmental policy has grown increasingly powerful, and threatens to result in a deadlock in both trade and environmental negotiations unless some of the organizational issues can be resolved in a satisfactory manner. This growing consensus that international environmental management needs reform and strengthening
found its expression in Decision 21/21 of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
