The legitimacy and effectiveness of global environment

This working paper contains reports on the creation of more effective and legitimate multi-governance arrangements in various policy domains from the 8. Nordic Environmental Social Science Research Conference held in Norway in June, 2007.

The working paper explains that debates about sustainable development are increasingly dominated by questions of how to secure values such as participation, representation, accountability and legitimacy in global environmental governance. Particularly the participation of non-state actors, such as business and civil society, is regarded as critical for the effective implementation of sustainable development policies in the EU, UN and various multi-level governance arrangements. Further to this the transformation of political authority through the emergence of new forms of post-sovereign power makes an assessment of the effectiveness and accountability of these networked governance structures important.

Papers presented in the report include:

• “Common basis for the Multilateral Environmental Agreements (A comparative analysis of the existing MEAs from different approaches)”, by Anna Vartanyan: this paper is split into two parts. The first part is dedicated to the creation of a common agreement, while the second part focuses on financial mechanisms.
  
• “Ecological modernization revisited ? its effectiveness and legitimacy”, by Alf-Inge Jansen and Oddgeir Osland: revisits the theoretical debate, examining various positions, also discussing whether empirical developments in the area of climate policy, implies reformulation of these very positions.
  
• “Local climate governance: the example of Swedish municipalities” by Dr. Jamil Khan: aims to start a discussion on the qualities and characteristics of climate governance in these ‘climate municipalities’ by using the concepts of input and output legitimacy. The paper is based on earlier literature and on some evidence from three municipalities in Sweden.
  
• “New institutions are not sufficient” by Anne Bregnballe: based on a three-year case study of a Local Agenda project from 1996 – 1999 and further text analyses of some of the most important Norwegian research programmes about sustainable development from the middle of the 90s until today.
  
• “Discourse on democratic legitimacy of forest and nature conservation policy in Finnish print media: key principles and framework for analysis” by Tapio Rantala: this paper has two distinct objectives. One is to test and refine conceptions of democratic legitimacy and corresponding research instruments that especially facilitate study of public support to forest regime. The second is to develop further the conceptual framework of legitimacy in order to better understand different dimensions of legitimacy and their relations.