Workshop on International Environmental Governance: Grounding Policy Reform in Rigorous Analysis

The workshop is a joint initiative of the Federal Office for the Environment of Switzerland, the Global Environmental Governance Project of the Center for Governance and Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and the World Trade Institute at the University of Berne.

It brings together renowned academics and policymakers. The goals of the workshop are to identify existing reform ideas and to generate new ones, grounded in rigorous academic analysis and tested against practice. We seek to provide concrete input as governments negotiate a new set of institutional arrangements for environment and sustainable development in the run up to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development to be held in Rio de Janeiro in May 2012. The workshop will also provide the opportunity to create a long-term, focused research and policy network. 

Objectives of the workshop are to:

• Create a taxonomy of systemic deficiencies in global environmental governance.

• Identify responses, strategies and redesign ideas for addressing the most urgent deficiencies of global environmental governance.

• Devise a joint action plan for policymakers and scholars to advance demand-driven research on global environmental governance.