Environmental Regime Effectiveness ― Confronting Theory With Evidence

This book examines why some international environmental regimes succeed while othersfail. Confronting theory with evidence, and combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, itcompares fourteen case studies of international regimes. It considers what effectiveness in a regimewould look like, what factors might contribute to effectiveness, and how to measure the variables.It determines that environmental regimes actually do better than the collective model of the bookpredicts.The effective regimes examined involve the End of Dumping in the North Sea, Sea Dumping ofLow-Level Radioactive Waste, Management of Tuna Fisheries in the Pacific, and the Vienna Conventionand Montreal Protocol on Ozone Layer Depletion. Mixed-performance regimes include Land-BasedPollution Control in the North Sea, the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution,Satellite Telecommunication, and Management of High Seas Salmon in the North Pacific. Ineffectiveregimes are the Mediterranean Action Plan, Oil Pollution from Ships at Sea, International Trade inEndangered Species, the International Whaling Commission, and the Convention for the Conservation ofAntarctic Marine Living Resources.

Jorgen Wettestad is a Senior Research Fellow at the Fridtjof Nansen Institutein Norway. He has published extensively in international journals and bookson international environmental regimes and EU politics. His most recentbooks include Clearing the Air -- European Advances in Tackling Acid Rain and Atmospheric Pollution (2002) and (with coauthors) Environmental Regime Effectiveness(2002).