Over the past 20 or so years, the world has developed a vast array of international environmental agreements. Approximately 900 international environmental agreements worldwide have been negotiated and set into place.1 These include bilateral and multilateral, regional, and global agreements that cover a variety of issues and problems and vary tremendously in purpose and strength. The United States participates in or has a significant interest in more than 170.2
Many difficult hours have been spent negotiating the language of these agreements. The complexity and intensity of negotiation, the science supporting decisionmaking, and the politics of reaching agreement have dominated public perception of the international environmental regime, as well as the attention of the environmental community.3 The agreements have become increasingly ambitious in their scope.4
Ruth Greenspan Bell is Director, Program for International Environmental Institutional Development, at Resources for the Future. As Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, she formulated the strategies that are discussed in this Dialogue. She has previously served in various capacities at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, most recently as Senior Attorney providing legal and policy institution building advice to foreign governments seeking to strengthen their regimes for environmental protection. The author thanks Eileen Claussen for the unique opportunity of examining these issues and providing recommendations. Jacob Scherr, David Victor, Philippe Sands, David Freestone, Peter Sand, Brad Gentry, Lee Kimball, Terry Davies, Tom Troyer, Irving Mintzer, Will Martin, John Steinbruner, Hilary French, Sue Biniaz, Sonia Henneman, Trish MacQuarrie, Faith Halter, Bob Ward, Dan Esty, Edith Brown Weiss, Armin Rosencranz, and numerous people from the Environmental Law Institute were generous with their time and thoughts. The views expressed here are those of the author.
