Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap

An examination of whether accountability mechanisms in global environmental governance that focus on monitoring and enforcement necessarily lead to better governance and better environmental outcomes.

The rapid development of global environmental governance has been accompanied by questions of accountability. Efforts to address what has been called “a culture of unaccountability” include greater transparency, public justification for governance decisions, and the establishment of monitoring and enforcement procedures. And yet, as this volume shows, these can lead to an “accountability trap”—a focus on accountability measures rather than improved environmental outcomes. Through analyses and case studies, the contributors consider how accountability is being used within global environmental governance and if the proliferation of accountability tools enables governance to better address global environmental deterioration. Examining public, private, voluntary, and hybrid types of global environmental governance, the volume shows that the different governance goals of the various actors shape the accompanying accountability processes. These goals—from serving constituents to reaping economic benefits—determine to whom and for what the actors must account.

After laying out a theoretical framework for its analyses, the book addresses governance in the key areas of climate change, biodiversity, fisheries, and trade and global value chains. The contributors find that normative biases shape accountability processes, and they explore the potential of feedback mechanisms between institutions and accountability rules for enabling better governance and better environmental outcomes.

Contributors
Graeme Auld, Harro van Asselt, Cristina Balboa, Lieke Brouwer, Lorraine Elliott, Lars H. Gulbrandsen, Aarti Gupta, Teresa Kramarz, Susan Park, Philipp Pattberg, William H. Schaedla, Hamish van der Ven, Oscar Widerberg

Susan Park is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Sydney.

Teresa Kramarz is Director of the Munk One Foundation Program, Codirector of the Environmental Governance Lab, and Associate Professor and Research Associate in Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. She is coeditor of Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap (MIT Press).

Teresa Kramarz is Director of the Munk One Foundation Program, Codirector of the Environmental Governance Lab, and Associate Professor and Research Associate in Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. She is coeditor of Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap (MIT Press).

Susan Park is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Sydney.

Aarti Gupta is Associate Professor in the Environmental Policy Group of the Department of Social Sciences at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

Cristina M. Balboa is Associate Professor at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, City University of New York.

Philipp Pattberg is Associate Professor of Transnational Governance in the Department of Environmental Policy Analysis, Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University.

Carl Elliott is Professor in the Center for Bioethics and the Departments of Pediatrics and Philosophy at the University of Minnesota.

Susan Park is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Sydney.

Teresa Kramarz is Director of the Munk One Foundation Program, Codirector of the Environmental Governance Lab, and Associate Professor and Research Associate in Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. She is coeditor of Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap (MIT Press).