Fredy D. Polo-Villanueva , Pradip Kumar Sarker , Lukas Giessen , Sarah Lilian Burns
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Previous research has shown that international donors can significantly influence national and international environmental governance. However, their influence at the regional level has not yet been sufficiently explored. This study aims to examine the influence of international donors on regional environmental governance agreements, taking the Amazon Cooperation Treaty (ACT) as a case study. Using a documentary analysis covering four decades, reviews of academic literature and media articles, and interviews with key informants, this study traces the influence of donors through three distinct stages: protectionism, formalisation and policy customisation. In the first stage, the limited influence of international donors did not translate into significant changes in the initially low degree of formalisation of the agreement. In the second stage, the moderate to high influence of international donors led member states to enhance the degree of formalisation of the ACT and to adopt for the first time a weak forest-related policy in the search to increase its capacities to attract and manage external funds. In the third stage, the still high influence of international donors increased the strength of the newly adopted forest-focused policy of the ACT to moderate. We conclude that international donors can influence regional environmental governance arrangements by increasing their degree of formalisation and the strength of their (forest) policies; as well as by customising their policies to they their interests rather than those of the arrangements’ member states.
期刊介绍:
Environmental Development provides a future oriented, pro-active, authoritative source of information and learning for researchers, postgraduate students, policymakers, and managers, and bridges the gap between fundamental research and the application in management and policy practices. It stimulates the exchange and coupling of traditional scientific knowledge on the environment, with the experiential knowledge among decision makers and other stakeholders and also connects natural sciences and social and behavioral sciences. Environmental Development includes and promotes scientific work from the non-western world, and also strengthens the collaboration between the developed and developing world. Further it links environmental research to broader issues of economic and social-cultural developments, and is intended to shorten the delays between research and publication, while ensuring thorough peer review. Environmental Development also creates a forum for transnational communication, discussion and global action.
Environmental Development is open to a broad range of disciplines and authors. The journal welcomes, in particular, contributions from a younger generation of researchers, and papers expanding the frontiers of environmental sciences, pointing at new directions and innovative answers.
All submissions to Environmental Development are reviewed using the general criteria of quality, originality, precision, importance of topic and insights, clarity of exposition, which are in keeping with the journal''s aims and scope.