NGO Diplomacy: The Influence of Nongovernmental Organizations in International Environmental Negotiations

Provides an analytical framework for assessing the impact of NGOs on intergovernmental negotiations on the environment and identifying the factors that determine the degree of NGO influence, with case studies that apply the framework to negotiations on climate change, biosafety, desertification, whaling, and forests.
Over the past thirty years nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have played an increasingly influential role in international negotiations, particularly on environmental issues. NGO diplomacy has become, in the words of one organizer, an “international experiment in democratizing intergovernmental decision making.” But there has been little attempt to determine the conditions under which NGOs make a difference in either the process or the outcome of international negotiations. This book presents an analytic framework for the systematic and comparative study of NGO diplomacy in international environmental negotiations. Chapters by experts on international environmental policy apply this framework to assess the effect of NGO diplomacy on specific negotiations on environmental and sustainability issues. The proposed analytical framework offers researchers the tools with which to assess whether and how NGO diplomats affect negotiation processes, outcomes, or both, and through comparative analysis the book identifies factors that explain variation in NGO influence, including coordination of strategy, degree of access, institutional overlap, and alliances with key states. The empirical chapters use the framework to evaluate the degree of NGO influence on the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations on global climate change, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, negotiations within the International Whaling Commission that resulted in new management procedures and a ban on commercial whaling, and international negotiations on forests involving the United Nations, the International Tropical Timber Organization, and the World Trade Organization.
Contributors
Steinar Andresen, Michele M. Betsill, Stanley W. Burgiel, Elisabeth Corell, David Humphreys, Tora Skodvin