The overall objectives of the environmental governance section of the country profile are to provide an overview of international and national law and policy adopted by governments and intergovernmental organizations; highlight the activities and strategies pursued by non-governmental actors (environmental groups) and examine the nature of the relationships between the environmental groups and policy-makers at the national and supranational levels of governance.

In general, environmental governance focuses on:

a) The internal and external dynamics of institutions and instruments at local through national and supranational to global levels;

b) The relationships with different environmental institutions, groups and instruments (both formal and informal) within and between the different levels;

c) The relationships between environmental institutions, groups and instruments and commercial institutions and instruments (e.g. trade and finance);

d) The policy responses to resource and environmental issues such as water, climate change, biodiversity, forestry, pollution and so on.

The UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, 1992) marked a global consensus on several fundamental environment and development issues, resulting in convergence of intellectual and political energy towards the need for improving the interaction between mankind and the environment. Since then, urgency has been placed on combined efforts to mobilize the intellectual and scientific community in support of environmentally sustainable development; environmental governance at a global scale forms a critical component of this discussion.

According to the WSSD Plan of Implementation, “good governance, within each country and at the international level, is essential for sustainable development.” UNEP’s work to support a coherent structure of international environmental governance has been greatly enhanced by the Global Ministerial Environment Forum (GMEF), an annual gathering of environment ministers from round the world which meets annually as part of the UNEP Governing Council’s regular and special sessions.

In February 2001, the 21st Session of the Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum of UNEP initiated the International Environmental Governance (IEG) process by adopting decision 21/21 that called for a greatly strengthened institutional structure for international environmental governance based on an assessment of future needs for an institutional architecture that has the capacity to effectively address wide-ranging environmental threats in a globalizing world.

Decision 21/21 also established an Open-ended Intergovernmental Group of Ministers or Their Representatives on International Environmental Governance to report on improving coherence in international policy making, improving the effectiveness of multilateral environmental agreements and enhancing the role of UNEP.

Its final report, culminating in a decision adopted at the UNEP Governing Council’s seventh Special Session held in Cartagena, Colombia, in 2002, identified, among other things, the key role of the UN Environmental Management Group, established by the UN Secretary-General in 1999 to bring the environment into the mainstream of UN system activities and to enhance policy coordination across the environmental activities of the UN system and beyond, including the Bretton Woods institutions and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

An interesting study on UNEP’s role in international environmental governance, conducted by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy is available at the Global Environmental Governance website: http://www.yale.edu/gegdialogue/. The report is entitled "Assessing UNEP as Anchor Institution for the Global Environment: Lessons for the UNEO Debate." (PDF).

The major concern in environment governance is the implementation of existing multilateral environmental agreements. In this section of the country profile a link has been provided to the environmental law information gateway, ECOLEX, which provides authoritative information on the environmental treaties signed or ratified by different countries.

ECOLEX (www.ecolex.org) is a comprehensive, internet-based information service on environmental law and policy (including natural resource management) operated jointly by UNEP, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). National environmental legislation is also available from the FAOLEX service (www.faolex.org) of FAO. Both metadata and the full text of national laws are available.

In addition to environmental law, this section of the country profile also points to information on policies, strategies and action plans adopted by governments to address national and international challenges across a wide range of thematic areas.