Environmental issues and questions of global change are now firmly established on the international political agenda. This book provides a wide-ranging survey of the current treatment of ...environmental issues in international relations. This book begins by looking at the relevance of the different theoretical approaches current in international relations to the study of the environment. It analyzses a wide range of approaches from the debate between neo-realism and liberal institutionalism to the significant connections between gender and global environmental change. The book goes on to consider a range of key international processes, discussing the monitoring and implementation of environmental agreements, the place of ideology in negotiations and the role of international organisations.
Environmental issues and questions of global change are now firmly established on the international political agenda. This book provides a wide-ranging survey of the current treatment of ...environmental issues in international relations. This book begins by looking at the relevance of the different theoretical approaches current in international relations to the study of the environment. It analyzses a wide range of approaches from the debate between neo-realism and liberal institutionalism to the significant connections between gender and global environmental change. The book goes on to consider a range of key international processes, discussing the monitoring and implementation of environmental agreements, the place of ideology in negotiations and the role of international organisations.
This article questions the attitudes of a sample group of British young people to the rituals of remembrance commonly observed in the United Kingdom during the second week of November. In view of the ...complete transformation of war and war service since 1919 - none of the fallen from current and recent wars in Afghanistan or Iraq are buried abroad or buried unknown, and none were conscripted - this article seeks to establish whether or not the established '1919 model' of remembrance continues to best serve contemporary attitudes to military service and military loss. To this end, participant students were invited to complete a questionnaire and debate their views in various discussion groups and in a plenary session. All discussion groups were facilitated by and moderated by a team of university tutors and high school teachers. The results indicated very high levels of support for and engagement with remembrance events. The results also indicated widespread respect for and imaginative use of the traditional 'two-minute silence'.
This article focuses on the United Nations' reform debates, particularly
those surrounding changes to the Security Council. These debates are largely about
rules, both formal and informal, that shape ...the roles of the veto powers and the
ways in which other member-states can attain a seat on the Council. In order to
implement the largely rule-governed system of collective security, it is necessary
to have a Security Council that reflects a legitimate structure of authority. As the
current debate demonstrates, however, the rules governing the powers of the Security
Council raise numerous questions of legitimacy and authority, questions that are at
the heart of a rule-governed order.
The UN Conference on Environment and Development at Rio agreed to the creation of a new organ within the UN to coordinate the implementation of sustainable development policies. The Sustainable ...Development Commission represents a surprising achievement in view of the generally critical attitudes of some among the Group of Seven to creating new organs within the UN system. The UN Environmental Programme, cited for an expansion of its role has, over the 20 years of its existence, established a good reputation for pioneering small-scale catalytic programmes. It has also been unfairly burdened with nominal obligations to coordinate other UN activities in the field. However, the post-Rio future raises both problems and opportunities for UNEP. An expansion of UNEP may raise asset-stripping possibilities as well as strain donor confidence as the programme enlarges.
Overhauling and coordinating the UN's internal organisation to reflect the change in consciousness from environment and development as two separate areas to sustainable development as an integrated ...policy is a formidable task. The newly created Commission on Sustainable Development has been charged with the tasks of UNCED follow up and national reporting, as well as aspects of UN system coordination. The role of UNEP has been strengthened. The UNDP has an important role to play; its finances far outstrip those of UNEP. New money for sustainable development, meagre though it is, is to be channelled through the Global Environmental Facility which is a cause for concern among developing countries suspicious of its ties with the World Bank. Perhaps more fundamental than organisational constraints are the financial constraints on the implementation of sustainable development policies. Unless the flow of resources via debt repayment from South to North is halted and reversed, even a streamlined UN system will have only a very limited impact on sustainable development.
Two issues have dramatized the revived potential for a decisive UN contribution to diplomacy in the 1990s. One is the rise of the environmental agenda as an issue at once, both genuinely global, and ...politically divisive. Conflict is generated because global warming, acid deposition, ozone depletion and marine pollution create real but also differential costs to the states of the world. The second issue, apparent since 1989, is the renewed opportunities for peacekeeping, and the credibility of economic sanctions created by the end of the Cold War and the onset of the Gulf Crisis. Some environmental threats, such as the potential consequences of rising sea-levels, also impinge on traditional military-territorial concepts of security. The fusion of these issues has given rise to the idea of environmental security which generates both an opportunity and a test for the UN's revival as a focus of multi-lateral diplomacy.
June 1985 marked the fortieth anniversary of the opening of the San Francisco conference on international organization that adopted the UN charter. This period, distinguished by the absence of war ...between the superpowers, is double the period that elapsed between 1918 and 1939. It was the hope and intention of those gathered at San Francisco that their labours would produce an institutional framework of collective security in which a recurrence of the conditions and behaviour that characterized the inter-war period could be avoided.
