International Institutions and Social Learning in the Management of Global Environmental Risks

Abstract

This article investigates the role played by formal international institutions in the broader process of international efforts to respond to and manage global and transboundary environmental risks. Because few international institutions are designed to deal with the broad nature of environmental risks, it focuses on institutional learning. By analyzing the experiences of the United Nations Environment Program, World Meteorological Organization, and other international institutions involved with global warming, this article identifies institutional properties (or functions) that encourage or inhibit social learning in the management of global environmental risks by international institutions, and that influence the adoption of such lessons by their constituent members.

Water resources data and information exchange in transboundary water treaties

“…This rise in attention to the institutional dynamics of transboundary water management is complemented by another stream of research focused on the role of scientific and technical knowledge in complex environmental issues (e.g., Haas 2000;Miller and Edwards 2001;Jasanoff 2004;Dimitrov 2006). Increasingly, data and information to understand complex problems is seen as a key component of the successful governance of common pool resources (Dietz et al 2003).…”

The institutional economics of sharing biological information

“…Hence, a better way of studying the dynamic efficiency of changes in beliefs is to compare historically successful cases of dynamic interaction between rules and beliefs. This method is at the heart of North's study of economic history, and has more recently also been applied successfully in the study of the regulation of climate change and pollution control (Haas 1990; Haas and McCabe 2001). Examples of successful design principles that emerged from these studies are the independence of the learning process from the policy process, the importance of an institutional mandate in the learning community (Haas and McCabe 2001) and the participation of the widest possible community in the learning process, so as to prevent vested interests blocking progress (North 1995).…”

Special interests and the media: Theory and an application to climate change

“…The paper thus contributes to a large literature, mostly outside of economics, on the communication of scientific findings to the public (Mazur 1973; Check 1987; Limoges 1993; Dearing 1995; Boykoff and Boykoff 2004), and on the role of expert communities in environmental policy (Haas 1989, 2000; Toke 1999). 5 …”