Analysis of the effects of environmental treaties

University Of Oregon Eugene, Eugene OR

Investigators

Abstract

Why do some environmental treaties perform so much better than others? Countries have negotiated hundreds of environmental agreements, some have resolved problems, some have had limited or no influence, and some have achieved their objectives simply due to fortuitous circumstances. This project responds to recent calls for policy-relevant, decision-support research on global environmental change and a "transition to sustainability" by identifying features of environmental treaties that can make both existing and future agreements more effective. It will analyze environmental quality and behaviors targeted by a range of environmental agreements to: understand how much of the variation in environmental outcomes is due to relevant agreements and how much is due to other factors; identify which agreements have greater, and lesser, effects; determine how much particular design features contribute to an agreement's effects; and analyze how the benefits of particular design features depend upon characteristics of the environmental problem, international context, countries involved, and other factors. The project will build a unique meta-dataset linking existing and new data on scores of environmental agreements, the outcomes they target and indicators of legal, economic, political, and social drivers of those outcomes. The project will develop and test regression models designed to distinguish effects of agreements from other explanatory factors, to allow meaningful comparison of the effects of agreements that address quite different environmental problems, and to evaluate how generalizable "successful" design features are to other problems. As most prior research on environmental agreements has derived from case studies, development and application of a database and quantitative methods addressed to a large and diverse set of agreements opens up new possibilities for assessing whether qualitative findings are case-specific or can be generalized to other cases, controlling for the effects of non-agreement factors, and providing greater confidence regarding how one agreement's effects compare to those of others and to non-agreement factors. Scholars and practitioners will be informed of the project database, coding and analysis methods, and findings through scholarly and policy-oriented articles; a book; and a website. The research will move scholarship forward by extending previous case study work on regime effects by confirming, extending, or refuting existing claims regarding whether, how much, and under what conditions environmental agreements contribute to environmental protection. It will move the development of better environmental agreements forward by identifying those design features most likely to promote better performance as well as how non-agreement factors may limit the influence of an agreement in certain contexts. In addition, making the methods and dataset publicly available will help other scholars, governments, treaty secretariats, and non-governmental organizations to investigate questions beyond those addressed here.