Policy Analysis

Global Environmental Governance: The Challenge of Accountability

By Mark Halle, Adil Najam on May 4, 2010

This issue of Sustainable Development Insights argues that accountability-or lack thereof-is a fundamental challenge in confronting improved global environmental governance (GEG) and that success must be measured not simply by the vitality of the negotiation process but by the robustness of implementation. States as well as institutions must be judged not by their statements of good intentions but by measurable implementation of their commitments and achievement of goals. The authors provide five reasons for GEG's culture of unaccountability and seven related ideas for GEG reform.

Sustainable Development Insights is a series of short policy essays supporting the Sustainable Development Knowledge Partnership (SDKP) and edited by Boston University's Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. The series seeks to promote a broad interdisciplinary dialogue on how to accelerate sustainable development at all levels.

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