序論　地球環境ガバナンス研究の最先端

抄録

The number of international environmental treaties has surged since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. Private regimes initiated by non-state actors, such as non-governmental organizations, have also expanded to tackle global environmental issues. The establishment of multiple private regimes in same environmental issues led to the formation of private regime complexes. In addition, the UN initiative of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a sort of governance through goals, has started since 2015. The high institutional density and diversity in public and private spheres led to the explosion of academic literature on global environmental governance. However, in contrast to the substantial post-war improvement in other global governance issues such as peace, trade, development, and human rights, the state of global environmental problems has worsened in most cases. The progress of SDGs is also slow in terms of environmental goals, and they will most probably not be able to meet the targets by 2030. The approach of governance through goals is not successful in the prevention or control of climate change and biodiversity loss, either. The Paris Agreement on climate change intended to restrict the rise of global surface temperature to well below 2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the bottom-up approach of nationally determined contributions (NDCs). However, it is simulated that the increase in global surface temperature will soon exceed the target of 1.5 degrees and reach 3.1 degrees in 2030. The Convention on Biodiversity set the Aichi Targets in 2010 to speed down global biodiversity loss. However, parties to the convention failed to attain all of the twenty individual targets set in Aichi Targets by 2020. Responding to the public governance deficit in biodiversity conservation, private sustainability certification schemes have proliferated in agricultural, forestry, and seafood products. However, as effective biodiversity conservation requires comprehensive national plans of land utilization and economy, the potential of private sustainability regimes to fill the governance gap is limited. Can the academic research of global environmental governance not develop the wisdom to tackle the classic problems of economics, such as the tragedy of commons and market failure, by governance without government? This special issue is published on this problem recognition. It consists of seven case study articles, four of which are related to climate change, two to agriculture and forestry, and one to big science in global environmental problems. Several important issues, such as biodiversity loss, desertification, and Japan’s engagement in global environmental governance, are missing in this volume, highlighting the importance of extending the research scope in the Japanese study of global environmental governance.