Protecting the Global Environment: towards Effective Governance and Equitable Solutions

Before this decade ends and human civilization enters the new millennium, these ten years will be remembered as a period that saw the emergence of several concerns on protecting the global environment. We see today a unique combination of scientific endeavour, economic decisionmaking and the formulation of public policy that embraces various actions directed towards understanding and halting widespread damage to the global environment. However, while much has been achieved in this field, such as eliminating the production and use of ozone depleting substances (ODS), many other more serious problems threatening the global environment, specifically those related to climate change, loss of biodiversity and large scale deforestation, remain subjects of relative inaction and prolonged dispute. There is as yet no clarity both within international bodies and national as well as local governments on the means by which these problems will be addressed effectively. There is, therefore, considerable confusion among decision-makers on the governance structures that need to be activated or created for achieving results in these spheres. In other words, the architecture for creating solutions and human responses in the right direction remains very much an elusive development. Nor is there, as yet, any creative consensus on what might constitute effective and equitable actions for protecting the global environment.