Second thoughts on WEO

I originally thought that it would be best to have a centralization model and establish one main world/global environment organization. However after reading Najam’s article again more objectivity I believe that he really brought up some important points and it seems that what we have now with the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) is something that should be improved upon rather than becoming the core of a new organization and dividing regimes covered by the organization into “multilateral and pluilateral agreements” as said by Biermann.

For example I’m going to have to go down some of my favorite points by Biermann in his article he says that it is plainly unfair to the UNEP because it will distract from other important challenges of global environmental governance. For example it will probably be met with large opposition from countries such as China and India, countries that didn’t have a large say at all when the UNEP was created as they do now. We say in the video in class today how those two counties were really unwilling to cooperate and how the United states seemed as though they could really care less stating that they had much more important things to take of (to be fair to President Obama he did) but that is not the type of leadership that will be able to integrate the current UNEP into a new overarching, new global environment organization.

Secondly I like how Biermann brought up the difference between institutions and organizations, and although I did not really understand it earlier, I believe I have a better grasp on it now.  For example he says that there is now real institution on environmental problems as a whole even though there is a current organization and this possess a huge problem, one that is not going to  be solved by creating a new organization that will take years, maybe a decade or more to completely implement throughout the world. It like baseball. As an institution baseball is fundamental in America, people most likely could not imagine an America without baseball, and the institution will hold for much longer regardless of what happens to the organization of MLB. In other words, do away with baseball, and the institution of “Americas greatest pastime” will live on.” However if you got rid of the UNEP and all other organizations or regimes created by it, then the institution of environmental policy for the good of the earth will probably disappear. Furthermore, it can probably be said that the institution of baseball developed well after the organization of the first teams. Here we can see that we are still waiting for the institution of environmental awareness to become more prevalent in the world, although there has obviously been some positives in the past decade.

Next he really attacks the fact that coordination is a major reason for a new world/global environmental organization. Personally I think he really just makes sense, especially when he says that a jump to say that organization is the reason for the ecological crisis. I mean one would have agree with him on some points, like how can one really show that there is a correlation with those issues. It seems to me that formation of  another organization would only complicate things, and that even if there are apparent organization flaws at present in the UNEP, who is to say that these will not follow or spill over into the new one.

 I think overall there needs to be some sort of push either way for more awareness of the problem at hand in order to better coordinate, improve technology, and implement the law, but thinking that creating an all-powerful organization I think will just have countries like China and India opposed to it for years and is not the grand answer to our problems