ABSTRACT
The international environmental arena is now thematically crowded; few unaddressed themes can be found among thousands of environmental treaties, 1 several dozen specialized international environmental institutions, and the tens of thousands of NGOs with interests in international environmental law and politics. Yet, despite this expansion of raw organizational capital in the international environment, very few of the principles, objectives, or commitments contained within these treaties, institutions, and associations can readily be considered law. In other words, a shortfall exists between the organizational capital aspirations of the international environmental community and the reality that the organizational capital assets that this community commands display a pervasive lack of robustness. At a global level, the current era of environmental law has not produced a halt in the degradation of biodiversity, a reversal of carbon concentration in the atmosphere, a stopping of the advance of deserts, or an aggregate decline in water pollution. For successes, the era can boast little more than a projected decline in ozone depleting substances and scattered local improvements.
