Markus Fraundorfer - Global Governance in The Age of The Anthropocene-Springer (2022)

Global Governance
in the Age of
the Anthropocene
Markus Fraundorfer
Global Governance in the Age of the Anthropocene
Markus Fraundorfer
Global Governance
in the Age
of the Anthropocene
Markus Fraundorfer
University of Leeds
Leeds, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-88155-9 ISBN 978-3-030-88156-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88156-6
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Iuliia Bycheva/Alamy Stock Photo
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
This project started to take shape after a discussion with Andrew Malvern,
then the International Relations editor at Macmillan Higher Education,
in early 2019. COVID-19 was not on the radar yet, but the global climate
crisis was as urgent as ever. And over coffee in one of the less frequented
coffeeshops on the university campus, we had an engaging conversation
about the global climate crisis and the dilemmas of global governance
in dealing with global environmental challenges. Out of this conversa-
tion emerged the idea to write a textbook that explicitly discussed the
tragic entanglements between global environmental challenges and the
emergence of the global governance system. I had been playing with the
thought of writing a textbook on this topic for some time. But it was
Andrew’s patient, meticulous and enthusiastic attitude that gave shape
to these vague and disconnected thoughts, and his advice safely steered
me through the specific challenges related to the writing of a textbook.
Without Andrew’s thoughts and suggestions, this textbook would not
exist. My gratitude also goes to Anca Pusca, the International Relations
editor at Palgrave Macmillan, who was so kind to take over the project
after Andrew left the publisher.
This is a textbook for students. And the ideas for this textbook devel-
oped over the past eight years when I was teaching different aspects of
global governance to students at the Institute of International Relations
at the University of São Paulo (2014–2018) and the School of Politics
and International Studies at the University of Leeds (since 2018). Many
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
thoughts and ideas discussed in class with my students at São Paulo and
Leeds have found their way into this book in some form. Thus, my grat-
itude also goes to my former students, who have definitely enriched this
project.
I am no less grateful to the School of Politics and International Studies
at the University of Leeds, whose fantastic research environment allowed
me to dedicate my time to this project. In this context, I am particu-
larly grateful to my colleagues Neil Winn, Anna Mdee, Hugh Dyer, Alex
Beresford and Olaf Corry, who were so kind to read parts of the typescript
and whose helpful suggestions and constructive criticism saved me from
some errors and misconceptions. I also thank three anonymous reviewers
whose constructive comments also significantly improved the quality of
the book.
In this book, I reproduced some passages from my previous books.
I am grateful to Anca Pusca for granting me permission to use passages
on nodal governance (Chapter 3.4) and food security (Chapter 5.3.1)
from my book Brazil’s emerging role in global governance: health, food
security and bioenergy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). I also thank Dhara
Snowden for granting me permission to use abbreviated versions of
passages on democracy in global governance (Chapter 3.3), Brazil’s Zero
Hunger strategy (Chapter 5.3.2) and the Committee on World Food
Security (Chapter 5.3.3) from my book Rethinking Global Democracy in
Brazil (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018). I also thank Rodanthi
Tzanelli for allowing me to include her poem Rewinding the Crisis in this
book.
Last but not least, I also thank my wife Juliana and daughter Cecília
for their constant emotional support during the writing process! I am very
lucky to have you both in my life!
Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Planetary Challenges: Interconnected, Simultaneous
and Instantaneous 1
1.2 What Is Global Governance? 4
1.3 Expressions of the Anthropocene 7
1.4 Global Governance and the Anthropocene 10
1.5 Organisation of the Book 13
References 20
2 Global Governance and the Anthropocene:
An Entangled History 23
2.1 A Very Brief History of the Anthropocene 23
2.1.1 The Geological Dimension 25
2.1.2 The Earth-System Dimension 26
2.1.3 The Civilisational Dimension 30
2.2 A Very Brief History of Global Governance 35
2.2.1 The Emergence of International
and Transnational Authority 36
2.2.2 The Political Economy of Global Governance 55
2.2.3 Entanglements Between Geological Time
and World Time 59
2.3 Summary 65
2.3.1 The Anthropocene 65
2.3.2 International and Transnational Authority 67
vii
viii CONTENTS
2.3.3 The Political Economy of Global Governance 68

2.3.4 Geological Time and World Time 68
References 69
3 Conceptual Toolbox 77
3.1 Authority in Global Governance 77
3.1.1 Einstein’s Conundrum 77
3.1.2 Disaggregated Authority in a Fragmented
and Polycentric System 79
3.1.3 Liquid and Reflexive Authority 81
3.2 Legitimacy in Global Governance 85
3.2.1 Institutional and Structural Sources
of Legitimacy 85
3.2.2 (De)legitimation Practices 90
3.3 Democracy in Global Governance 94
3.3.1 People Power 94
3.3.2 Expanding the Community of Rights Holders 96
3.3.3 Participation 98
3.3.4 Accountability 100
3.4 Networks and Nodes in Global Governance 102
3.4.1 Networks as the Glue in Global Governance 102
3.4.2 Nodes as Concentrations of Power in Global
Governance 105
3.5 Summary 108
3.5.1 Authority and Legitimacy in Global
Governance 108
3.5.2 Democracy in Global Governance 109
3.5.3 Networks and Nodes in Global Governance 110
References 112
4 Global Governance of Infectious Disease Outbreaks 117
4.1 Infectious Diseases in the Anthropocene 117
4.2 Infectious Diseases and the Global Health Governance
Architecture 123
4.3 Responding to Pandemics in the Twenty-First Century 128
4.3.1 CASE STUDY 1: SARS—Bending
and Twisting the State-Centric Logic 128
4.3.2 CASE STUDY 2: EBOLA—Refracting
Deep-Seated Structures of Inequality
and Injustice 134
CONTENTS ix
4.3.3 CASE STUDY 3: COVID-19—Global

Cooperation at Its Limits 140
4.4 Summary 147
4.4.1 The Consolidation of Authority Beyond the State 147
4.4.2 The Resilience of the Westphalian Logic 149
4.4.3 Biomedical Solutions 150
References 152
5 Global Food Production 161
5.1 Global Food Production in the Anthropocene 161
5.1.1 The Emergence of Industrialised and Globalised
Agricultural Production … 161
5.1.2 … And Its Devastating Consequences
for the Earth-System 163
5.2 The Global Food System 166
5.2.1 Its Colonial Roots 166
5.2.2 International Cooperation on Agriculture 168
5.2.3 The Globalisation of Livestock and Soybean
Production 171
5.3 Alternatives to the Dominant Dynamics of the Global
Food System 177
5.3.1 Case Study 1: Food Security, Food Sovereignty
and Food Justice 178
5.3.2 Case Study 2: The Role of the State: Brazil’s
Zero Hunger Strategy 185
5.3.3 Case Study 3: The Committee on World Food
Security 188
5.4 Summary 192
5.4.1 The Resilient Legacy of Colonialism
and the Westphalian Logic 192
5.4.2 The False Promise of the Techno-Productivist
Logic 193
5.4.3 The Promise of the Logic of Democracy
and Inclusion 193
References 196
6 Transboundary Water Governance 203
6.1 Freshwater in the Anthropocene 203
6.2 The Global Freshwater Governance Architecture 210
6.3 Protecting Our Planet’s Rivers and River Basins 216
x CONTENTS
6.3.1 Case Study 1: Transboundary Governance

in the Rio de La Plata River Basin
and the Guarani Aquifer System 217
6.3.2 Case Study 2: Water Conflicts in the Nile
River Basin 222
6.3.3 Case Study 3: Granting Legal Personhood
to Rivers 226
6.4 Summary 232
6.4.1 A Fragmented, Weak and Ill-Equipped
Freshwater Governance Architecture 232
6.4.3 A Break with Conventional Water Governance 234
References 236
7 Global Energy Governance 241
7.1 Energy in the Anthropocene 241
7.1.1 Coal—Carbonising, Transforming
and Revolutionising Human Societies 241
7.1.2 Oil—Raising the Game, Pushing Us Further
to the Brink 243
7.1.3 Fossil Fuel Alternatives—No Salvation in Sight 247
7.2 The Global Energy Governance Architecture 249
7.2.1 Visionary Beginnings 251
7.2.2 The Emergence of the Fossil-Fuelled Global
Energy Architecture 252
7.2.3 The Institutional Push for Renewables 254
7.2.4 A Scattered Architectural Landscape 256
7.3 The Global Push for Renewable Energies 257
7.3.1 Case Study 1: The Global Smart City Movement 257
7.3.2 Case Study 2: National Energy Transitions
and Germany’s Energiewende 265
7.4 Summary 271
7.4.1 Fragmentation and Westphalian Legacies 271
7.4.2 The Resilience of Fossil Fuels 272
7.4.3 The Fossilisation of Renewable Energies:
Corporatist vs Citizen-Based Visions 274
References 275
8 Global Environmental Governance 283
8.1 The Environment in the Anthropocene 283
CONTENTS xi
8.2 The Global Environmental Governance Architecture 284

8.2.1 A Maze with no Centre 284
8.2.2 The Montreal Protocol: Phasing Out
Ozone-Depleting Substances 286
8.2.3 The UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change and the Kyoto Protocol: Phasing Out
CO2 Emissions? 289
8.2.4 Forest Governance—Too Little, Too Late 295
8.3 Alternative Transnational Governance Approaches 301
8.3.1 Case Study 1: The Climate Action
of Transnational City Networks 302
8.3.2 Case Study 2: The Global Voice of Indigenous
Peoples 309
8.4 Summary 316
8.4.2 The Dominance of Market-Driven
and Technocratic Approaches 317
8.4.3 The Marginalisation of Ecological Approaches 318
References 320
9 Conclusion 327
9.1 The Tragic Entanglements Between Global Governance
and the Anthropocene 328
9.1.1 A Fragmented Global Architecture and Weak
International and Transnational Authorities 329
9.1.2 The Resilience of State-Centric and Colonial
Legacies 332
9.1.3 Capitalist Structures and the Commodification
of Nature 334
9.2 Breaking the Vicious Circle of Global Governance 338
References 347
Index 349
Acronyms and Abbreviations
°C Degree Celsius
ACT-A Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator
AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
APEC Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
ATTAC Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and
for Citizens’ Action
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BCM Billion Cubic Metres
BP Beyond Petroleum (formerly British Petroleum)
BSE Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
CARE Cooperative for Resistance and Relief Everywhere
CARICOM Caribbean Community
CBD United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity
CDU Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (Christian
Democratic Union of Germany)
CEO Chief Executive Officer
CEPI Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations
CERN European Organisation for Nuclear Research
CFCs Chlorofluorocarbons
CFS Committee on World Food Security
CH4 Methane
CIC Intergovernmental Coordinating Committee for the La
Plata Basin Countries
CO2 Carbon Dioxide
xiii
xiv ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
COICA Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organisations of the

Amazon Basin
COPs Conferences of the Parties
COVAX Global COVID-19 Vaccines Initiative
COVID-19 Coronavirus Disease 2019
CSO Civil Society Organisation
DACCS Direct Air Capture and Carbon Storage
DFID UK Department for International Development
DNA Deoxyribonucleic Acid
DNDi The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative
EAZA European Association of Zoos and Aquaria
ECLAC Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean
ECSC European Coal and Steel Community
ESA European Space Agency
FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations
FIND Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics
FONPLATA Financial Fund for the Development of the La Plata Basin
G20 The Group of Twenty
G7 The Group of Seven
G8 The Group of Eight
GAS Guarani Aquifer System
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GHG Greenhouse Gas
GM Genetically Modified
GOARN Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network
H1N1 Influenza A virus subtype H1N1
Ha Hectares
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus
IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
IBM International Business Machines Corporation
ICAN International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
ICANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
ICAO International Civil Aviation Organisation
ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability
ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross
IDB Inter-American Development Bank
IEA International Energy Agency
IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development
ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS xv
IHRs International Health Regulations

IIPFCC International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate
Change
IITC International Indian Treaty Council
ILO International Labour Organisation
IMF International Monetary Fund
IP Address Internet Protocol Address
IPACC Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IRENA International Renewable Energy Agency
ISS International Space Station
IT Information Technology
ITTO International Tropical Timber Organisation
ITU International Telecommunication Union (formerly Interna-
tional Telegraph Union)
IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature
IUFRO International Union of Forest Research Organisations
IWRM Integrated Water Resources Management
JBS José Batista Sobrinho
KM Kilometres
LNHO League of Nations Health Organisation
MEAs Multilateral Environmental Agreements
MERCOCUR Southern Common Market
MERS Middle East Respiratory Syndrome
MERS-CoV Middle East Respiratory Syndrome–Related Coronavirus
MIR Russian Space Station (1986 – 2001)
MMT Million Metric Tonnes
MMV Medicines for Malaria Venture
MSF Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)
MST Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Brazilian
Landless Workers’ Movement)
MTCO2 Metric Tonnes of Carbon Dioxide
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NGO Non-Governmental Organisation
NZ$ New Zealand Dollar
OAS Organisation of American States
OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
OIE World Organisation for Animal Health
OIHP Office International d’Hygiène Publique
OPEC Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
OSCE Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
OXFAM Oxford Committee for Famine Relief
xvi ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
PAHO Pan-American Health Organisation

ProMED Programme for Monitoring Emerging Diseases
R&D Research & Development
RAI-Principles Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and
Food Systems
REN21 Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st century
Rio+20 The 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development
SARS Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
SARS-CoV-1 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 1
SARS-CoV-2 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2
SDG Sustainable Development Goal
SEforALL Sustainable Energy for All initiative
SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Demo-
cratic Party of Germany)
TB Tuberculosis
TECCONILE The Technical Cooperation Committee for the Promotion
of the Development and Environmental Protection of the
Nile Basin
TRIPS Agreement Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Prop-
erty Rights
UAE United Arab Emirates
UCLG United Cities and Local Governments
UK United Kingdom
UN United Nations
UNCCD United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNDRIP United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organ-
isation
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change
UNFPA United Nations Population Fund
UNMEER United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response
UN-REDD United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation
UPU Universal Postal Union
US United States
US$ US Dollar
USAID United States Agency for International Development
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS xvii
VSV-EBOV Ebola Zaire Vaccine

W3C World Wide Web Consortium
WB World Bank
WFP World Food Programme
WHA World Health Assembly
WHO World Health Organisation
WTO World Trade Organisation
WWF World Wide Fund for Nature
List of Figures
Image 2.1 The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (Source The Crop
Trust, n.d.-b) 64
Image 3.1 Institutional sources of legitimacy (Source Scholte
and Tallberg 2018, 62) 86
Image 3.2 Types of legitimation and delegitimation (Source
Bäckstrand and Söderbaum 2018, 107) 92
Image 5.1 La Famille du duc de Penthièvre en 1768 ou La Tasse
de Chocolat [The Family of the Duke of Penthièvre
Called la Tasse de Chocolat], Jean Baptiste Charpentier,
1768 (Source Wikimedia Commons 2020) 167
Image 6.1 The Nile River Delta at night (Source NASA Earth
Observatory 2010) 204
Image 6.2 The shrinking Aral Sea in 2000 and 2018 (Source NASA
Earth Observatory, n.d.-a) 208
Image 6.3 The Xingu River in 2000 and 2017 (Source NASA Earth
Observatory, n.d.-b) 209
Image 7.1 Rare Earth in Bayan Obo (Source NASA Earth
Observatory 2012) 250
Image 9.1 The vicious circle of global governance (Source Own) 339
Image 9.2 The virtuous circle of global governance (Source Own) 345
xix
List of Boxes
Box 2.1 Geoengineering 28

Box 2.2 The Great Oxygenation Event 30
Box 2.3 Europe’s Geography 39
Box 2.4 The Great Acceleration of International Authority 41
Box 2.5 The City Hubs of Global Governance 43
Box 2.6 Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects 62
Box 4.1 Germ Theory 118
Box 4.2 COVID-19 as a Hyperobject 122
Box 4.3 The 2012 MERS-CoV Outbreak 141
Box 5.1 Global Food Production as a Hyperobject 164
Box 5.2 Echoes from the Past 168
Box 5.3 Definition of Food Security 179
Box 5.4 La Via Campesina’s Definition of Food Sovereignty 181
Box 5.5 Just Food’s Definition of Food Justice 183
Box 5.6 Brazil’s Zero Hunger Strategy and the Committee
on World Food Security 190
Box 6.1 Rivers as Hyperobjects 209
Box 6.2 The Māori People’s Relationship with the Whanganui River 229
Box 7.1 Joseph Conrad and the Emerging Ripples of Globalisation 242
Box 7.2 Fossil Fuels as Hyperobjects 245
Box 7.3 Nuclear Energy as a Hyperobject 247
Box 7.4 Energy Democracy 269
Box 8.1 Understanding the Ozone Layer 287
Box 8.2 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 290
Box 8.3 The Amazon’s Flying Rivers 296
Box 8.4 The Yanomami’s Davi Kopenawa 311
xxi
Rewinding the Crisis
You are drifting away from what was agreed to be real,

past the luminopolitan paradox of the movies we watched together,
past the blogging we shared with Extinction Rebellion,
the compositional activist fears that pixelated our shared cause;
past the digital designs of shared futures from governance centres
the principle of hope feigning novelty to deliver sameness for all,
past the promise of sustainability that assesses everybody’s ability
on the same standards, in the same disrespectful and intrusive style.
You are pulled into a web of life that is not just yours, your groomed dog’s or spoiled cat’s,
your back orchard’s pesticidal utopia, your beehive’s definition of climatic crisis,
you are pulled into a strange analytical concoction of temporal articulation,
spatial alienation, barely visible to commuters boarding a train with sail panels;
you have exited the claustrophobic underground to take off to the stratosphere,
taking snapshots of space debris, shooting stars and rotating sunrays
anything surviving the daily lunar travel to reach the cottage you had on the lonely planet,
a blue sphere lit by radiation at night and green hues in the mornings.
You are small and insignificant, with a grand conviction that you rule life’s semantic fields,
a hubristic assemblage of barely explored brainmatter, polymathic aspiration,
agential freedom, romantic nursing of the desire to stay on top of the chain:
a starmaker in a polis of planetary light, flickering its way to the long sleep.
Close your eyes and dream, but remember to open them again with anticipation
as you drift to the centre of policies in need of radical change,
not lullabies on the cradle of civilisation, but a loud polyphony of protest
we can be better, we can stay alive, we and our star.
Rodanthi Tzanelli
Tzanelli, R. 2021. Altermodernities: A Traveller’s Notes. Book 3: Searching for Hope. Amazon
Media EU S.à r.l., 7-8.
xxiii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
1.1 Planetary Challenges: Interconnected,

Simultaneous and Instantaneous
We live in a world affected by a range of global and planetary environ-
mental challenges whose destabilising consequences we can no longer
escape, be it an infectious disease outbreak in a remote corner of the
world, the deforestation of the remaining tropical rainforests, the disap-
pearance of animal species across the world, the pollution of rivers and
lakes, our reliance on fossil fuels for the functioning of our daily lives and
the relentless rise of global temperatures as a result of the daily emissions
of tonnes of carbon dioxide.
More than one-third of the planet’s landmass is used for agricul-
ture, which has transformed many regions into degraded landscapes,
principally when big agricultural industry is involved. Large-scale agricul-
ture, through land-use change, deforestation and fossil-fuel consumption,
is a major anthropogenic source of greenhouse gas emissions. The global
production processes of major food staples, such as soy, rice, maize
and meat, relentlessly drive environmental degradation, natural habitat
loss and species extinction, contribute to the contamination of fresh-
water resources and propel the emission of tonnes of carbon dioxide and
methane. Many of the viruses responsible for major infectious disease
outbreaks over the past twenty years originated in wild animals and
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
M. Fraundorfer, Global Governance in the Age of the Anthropocene,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88156-6_1
2 M. FRAUNDORFER
jumped to humans due to the rampant loss of natural habits and biodi-
versity across the world. The global demand for palm oil used in daily
food products like Nutella, bread, margarine, instant noodles, chocolate
and pizza bases drives the reckless deforestation of Indonesia’s rainforests,
one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. In the same vein, the
global hunger for meat fuels the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest,
the largest remaining tropical rainforest in the world. Both ecosystems
are essential pieces in the functioning of the global climate as we know it,
and their gradual disappearance will fundamentally alter global weather
systems with unpredictable environmental, social and political conse-
quences for all societies on this planet. Amid all these global impacts,
the daily functioning of our modern societies pumps billions of tonnes
of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the origin of anthropogenic
climate change and one of the major manifestations of the Anthropocene.
As a case in point, the COVID-19 disease outbreak in late December
2019 was a consequence of the severe environmental impact human
societies have on the Earth-system. The massive scale of environmental
devastation, natural habitat loss and the international trade in wild animals
have increasingly caused numerous zoonotic infectious disease outbreaks
(the transmission of viruses in wild animals to humans) since the turn of
this century. The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic encroached
upon all aspects of our lives. The pandemic had a significant impact
on global food production, devastating harvests and plunging millions
of local farmers into poverty. The national lockdowns implemented by
governments across the world to contain the spread of the virus consid-
erably changed our energy consumption patterns, bringing agricultural
production, national and international transport flows and traffic move-
ments to a standstill. The national lockdowns made us also aware of
how tight our grip on the environment has become. Satellite images
and private photos shot during the first few weeks in lockdown in 2020
revealed a miraculous transformation of our surroundings. Pictures of
megacities, usually enveloped by a thick wall of toxic smog, suddenly
showed blue skies and clearly distinguishable buildings. Satellite images
of some of the pandemic’s early epicentres, the Chinese city of Wuhan
and the Northern Italian Lombardy Region, showed an abrupt decrease
in air pollution.
This global pandemic highlighted how intrinsically interconnected
some of today’s global and planetary challenges are and how our
individual actions are exacerbating these challenges. While the disease
1 INTRODUCTION 3
outbreak was arguably a result of the global actions of many human

societies across the world, our response to the pandemic was piecemeal,
fragmented, disjointed, fraught with disorientation and confusion and
riddled by interstate conflicts and power struggles. A coherent, united
and global response to the COVID-19 pandemic was conspicuous by its
absence.
This book presents and summarises the dilemmas, complications and
difficulties global governance is struggling with to effectively tackle
some of the most urgent interconnected and simultaneously unfolding
global challenges of our time. These challenges, which risk destabil-
ising the global climate and our modern civilisation, include: the ever
more frequent global spread of new viruses and infectious diseases;
severe environmental devastation resulting from global food production
processes; freshwater scarcity and pollution resulting from overpopula-
tion, hydropower generation, intensive agricultural production and accel-
erating environmental degradation; the continued dominance of fossil
fuels in world energy consumption patterns; the acceleration of global
climate change resulting from ever-increasing CO2 emissions; and the
disappearance of the world’s last remaining tropical rainforests.
When looking back over the past few decades, it is undeniable that
these challenges have only become more pressing. And the existing global
governance architecture seems unable to devise effective and successful
responses to these challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic merely repre-
sents the latest example in a long list of governance failures when
confronted with global (environmental) challenges. Why is global gover-
nance struggling so much to come up with effective global solutions to
these global and planetary problems? What are the obstacles to effective
global and planetary problem-solving? And which solutions and responses
have global governance actors come up with to confront these challenges?
The global challenges to be discussed in this book stand out for
several reasons: (1) They all affect human societies across the globe,
non-human animal species worldwide as well as the entire Earth-system
(the geosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, and the biosphere). (2)
They are all fundamentally interconnected, and their implications can only
be fully understood by regarding these different challenges as an inter-
connected whole. (3) They affect us simultaneously and instantaneously,
impacting world regions, cities, states and societies at the same time.
(4) For millennia, these challenges have fundamentally shaped the evolu-
tion of humanity and molded our social, political and economic systems.
4 M. FRAUNDORFER
Today, these challenges are also reshaping the Earth-system with colossal
consequences for our modern and globalised societies. (5) Through our
daily individual and collective actions, most of us are intrinsically and
profoundly immersed in the global processes and dynamics which are
provoking and exacerbating these challenges so that we can no longer
escape their consequences.
1.2 What Is Global Governance?

At first sight, it is challenging to pin down what exactly global gover-
nance is. Both critics and supporters of the concept agree that the term
is conceptually messy and difficult to grasp. To come to grips with the
concept, we should return to the year 1992, the founding year of global
governance as a concept. In 1992, the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro
pushed environmental issues to the top of the agenda of governments
and international organisations; Barcelona hosted the Olympic Games;
Denmark somewhat unexpectedly won the Football European Champi-
onship; Bill Clinton was elected President of the US; Whitney Houston
and Kevin Costner were starring in The Bodyguard; Russia and the US
formally declared an end to the Cold War, which had dominated inter-
national politics for more than four decades after the Second World War;
and in the Dutch city of Maastricht, the twelve member states of the
European Communities came together to found the European Union.
The end of the Cold War ushered international politics into a new era,
characterised by interlocking trends of intensified economic and finan-
cial globalisation, economic, political and cultural interdependencies—and
political fragmentation, gradually reconfiguring the state-based interna-
tional order that had slowly developed over the past three centuries. It
is in this context of profound global power transitions that the concept
of global governance was born. In 1992, political scientists James N.
Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel published an edited volume, entitled
Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Poli-
tics, seeking to conceptualise the profound global changes that were
sweeping across international politics in the wake of the fall of the
Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the end of the
bipolar conflict between the US and the Soviet Union. The book
discusses the emerging possibilities of tackling transboundary challenges
like HIV/AIDS, environmental pollution, terrorism and the drug trade
for which a state-centric order with intergovernmental decision-making
1 INTRODUCTION 5
mechanisms is ill-equipped (Rosenau 1992, 22). The book asks the funda-
mental question of how to govern a broad range of transboundary and
global challenges in a fragmented international system where a central and
overarching organisation, such as a world government, is non-existent.
One of the essential characteristics of global governance refers to its
lack of a central organising authority beyond or above the state: a world
government. At the national, municipal and local levels, we can quickly
identify the central organising authorities that would be primarily respon-
sible for dealing with challenges related to public health, the environment,
energy and so forth. At the local and municipal levels, these authorities
are usually local councils, city councils and mayors. At the national level,
the responsible authorities are national governments headed by a presi-
dent, prime minister or chancellor along with government ministers and
their ministries. In democratic systems, these authorities of the execu-
tive are complemented by the legislative (a national parliament) and the
judicative (national courts). Through the creation, adoption and imple-
mentation of laws, policies and regulations, these institutions respond to
problems and challenges of a national scale, such as unemployment, health
crises, economic growth, agricultural production and so forth. But what
happens once we are confronted with problems and challenges that reach
far beyond the confines of national authorities? A similar institutional
infrastructure at the global level, such as a world government, a world
parliament or a world court, is non-existent. Thus, global governance,
in contrast to global government , encompasses all forms of governance
that emerge within and beyond the state to tackle those transboundary
challenges that no state and no group of states can tackle alone.
The 1995 Report of the UN Commission on Global Governance
tried to make sense of the global transformations taking place in the
early 1990s. Led by a panel of international experts, the commission
defined governance as “the sum of the many ways individuals and institu-
tions, public and private, manage their common affairs” (Commission on
Global Governance 1995, 2). Global governance “is a continuing process
through which conflicting or diverse interests may be accommodated and
co-operative action may be taken” (Commission on Global Governance
1995, 2). These governance processes include “formal institutions and
regimes empowered to enforce compliance, as well as informal arrange-
ments that people and institutions either have agreed to or perceive to
be in their interest” (Commission on Global Governance 1995, 2). The
commission imagined a concept of global governance that brings together
6 M. FRAUNDORFER
the broad variety of existing dynamics, processes and mechanisms at

different governance levels (local, national, regional, international and
global), as well as a broad range of actors bearing on decision-making
processes in different ways, far exceeding the traditional focus on the state.
Apart from state leaders, governmental representatives and high-ranking
officials in international organisations, global governance also embraces
the actions of individual citizens in global processes. Thus, the concept
of global governance opens up new space to reflect on how leadership
in global political, economic and social processes can be shaped by indi-
viduals who do not hold an official position within the machinery of the
state.
These individuals can be scientists, inventors, community organisers,
local farmers, CEOs, doctors or teenagers, virtually anyone whose actions
may bear on the processes and dynamics of global problem-solving. For
decades, the famous primatologist Jane Goodall has been at the forefront
of a global movement of NGOs and research institutes to fight against
the accelerating disappearance of the great apes and protect their last
remaining natural habitats. The biologist Sylvia Earle coined the term
“Hope Spots” to denominate special places that are vital to the health
of our oceans. The Sylvia Earle Alliance represents a global movement
to protect these “Hope Spots” and tackle the accelerating degradation
of marine life. With his BBC documentaries about our planet and its
multifaceted wildlife on land and in the oceans, the natural historian and
broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has shaped the awareness of an entire
generation about the place we call home. The documentary photographer
Sebastião Salgado has become known, apart from his penetrating photos
of nature and humanity, for his Instituto Terra, an environmental organ-
isation that has been at the forefront of reforesting degraded areas in
Brazil’s Atlantic Rainforest.
The 1995 Report of the UN Commission on Global Governance ends
with the following note: “The hope must be people–people demanding
enlightenment of their leaders, refusing to accept the alternative of
humanity at war with itself. And that hope is balanced by the promise
of the leadership that future generations will bring” (Commission on
Global Governance 1995, 356–357). In this sense, Greta Thunberg and
her generation of pupils across the world have become a new symbol of
hope with their FridaysforFuture school strikes in 2018 and 2019.
Global governance captures the whole spectrum of this colourful kalei-
doscope of intertwined and interwoven social, political, cultural and
1 INTRODUCTION 7
economic dynamics, processes and actor constellations that shape, mould,

carve and sculpture the multifaceted ways in which human societies
respond to global and planetary challenges. This complexity of political,
social and economic processes and dynamics interwoven with a multitude
of different actors acting in different geographical spaces and at separate
governance levels necessarily creates a messy concept hard to grasp. At
the same time, this messiness is a mere reflection of the messiness of the
global processes and dynamics that have evolved over the past few decades
to address global and planetary challenges.
1.3 Expressions of the Anthropocene

Over the past twenty years, the term of the Anthropocene has become
widely established to define a new geological epoch in which our human
presence has become so powerful that its impact on the Earth-system is
provoking climatic responses of a magnitude not seen on the planet for
hundreds of thousands of years.
Global and planetary challenges are reflections of our unprece-
dented global impact on the Earth-system. Climatic changes are natural
phenomena in a planet’s life cycle. Planet Earth is no exception and
has experienced several radical and extreme cycles of climate change
in its 4.5 billion-year-long history. The stable climate with relatively
mild temperatures that dominated over the past ten thousand years is
rather uncommon in the planet’s history. Around three million years ago,
surface temperatures on the planet were 2–3 °C above those in the mid-
twentieth century, sea levels were up to 20 metres above that of today
and Earth’s atmosphere was brimming with carbon dioxide (Summer-
hayes and Zalasiewicz 2018, 195). In the first 2.5 billion years of its
history, the planet’s atmosphere consisted of volcanic and greenhouse
gases toxic to any complex life forms. 640 million years ago, the entire
planet was deeply frozen with average global temperatures of minus 50
degrees (Davies 2016, 114).
For the planet, the latest cycle of climatic changes is nothing new.
These changes are, however, new and unprecedented for entire ecosys-
tems and the species inhabiting the planet, including humanity. Modern
humans and their complex and fragile civilisations are not used to climate
change, even less to those massive and radical changes whose dark storm
clouds are brewing on the horizon. Hence, the consequences of the
current changes in the planet’s climate represent the most dangerous
8 M. FRAUNDORFER
threat that modern human societies have ever confronted. Unprecedented

in the history of humanity, these climatic changes are now reaching
dangerous tipping points in the early twenty-first century. While drastic
climatic changes have occurred over the last two millennia—such as the
Little Ice Age in Europe between the thirteenth and nineteenth century—
their effects had been regionally confined. But global climate change,
particularly in the sense of global warming, affecting every world region
and every human society simultaneously, represents an entirely novel
reality for humanity (Neukom, Steiger, et al. 2019). As a case in point,
the second half of the twentieth century witnessed the warmest temper-
atures of the past two thousand years (Neukom, Barboza, et al. 2019).
Given humanity’s history of resilience and adaptability to changing envi-
ronments, our species may survive even these drastic changes; but our
complex social, political and economic systems may not (McNeill 2001,
XXIV).
In the 1950s, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere surpassed
the historic threshold of 300 parts per million (ppm) for the first time
in more than 300,000 years. In early 2014, the concentration of CO2
in the atmosphere surpassed 400 ppm, another historic record not seen
on this planet for millions of years (Davies 2016, 16–18). Current CO2
concentrations in the atmosphere match those of about four million years
ago (Lenton et al. 2019), and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere
continue to rise relentlessly. Since the 1970s, global average tempera-
tures have increased dramatically. In the twenty-first century, almost every
single year has been warmer than the previous one (NASA 2021a). Four
of the five warmest decades of the past 2000 years eventually occurred
between 1950 and 2000 (Kaufman et al. 2009). In the ever more real-
istic scenario that global temperatures will increase by 4 °C by the end
of this century, this would mark an unprecedented global temperature
record not experienced on this planet for 15 million years (Hamilton
et al. 2015, 4). Given constantly climbing global temperatures, the ice
sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are rapidly losing mass. For at least
350 years, Greenland’s accelerating ice loss has not been as dramatic as in
the twenty-first century (Trusel et al. 2018). The acceleration of snow ice
melt in Antarctica today is unprecedented for at least 1000 years (Abram
et al. 2013).
In the context of these historic climatic changes on a planetary scale,
our planet is currently witnessing the greatest mass extinction of species
and the greatest loss of biodiversity since the extinction of the dinosaurs
1 INTRODUCTION 9
some 66 million years ago (Davies 2016, 112–144; Hamilton et al. 2015,
4). While the planet has witnessed several mass extinction events, this
particular mass extinction is unprecedented: it is the first time in the plan-
et’s history that humans are responsible for the loss and eradication of
almost all other species on this planet (Ceballos et al. 2017). The envi-
ronmental scientist and policy analyst Vaclav Smil calculated that in the
last century alone “the mass of wild mammals was halved […], while the
mass of domesticated animals more than tripled and the global mass of
humanity more than quadrupled” (2019, 505). Entire ecosystems that
have taken thousands of years to form, grow and develop are collapsing
in front of our eyes, among them coral reefs, river basins, tropical rain-
forests and our oceans. Over the past few centuries, humanity has grown
into a planetary force. Its actions have left behind an imprint on the
Earth-system that is as devastating as the impact of the asteroid around 66
million years ago that led to the planet’s fifth mass extinction and swept
away the dinosaurs.
Both the nineteenth and twentieth century were extraordinary in our
history—and the planet’s history. The twentieth century, however, was
unprecedented in many ways: after the Second World War, the world
economy grew faster than ever before in human history; the twentieth
century stands apart as the period in which our species made the most
remarkable leap in population growth: from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6
billion in 2000; world oil production rose from 20 million metric tonnes
(mmt) in 1900 to a spectacular 3000 mmt in 1990; world energy use
skyrocketed 12-fold from 800 mmt in 1900 to 10,000 mmt in 2000, with
humans using more energy than ever before in their history; between the
1890s and 1990s, our industrial output rose by a factor of 40; the world’s
total irrigated area jumped from 48 million ha in 1900 to 255 million ha
in 1995; whereas in 1890 only 14 per cent of the world population lived
in cities, 43 per cent of the world population was urban in 1990; the
global marine fish catch revolved around 2 million metric tonnes in 1900
compared with 74 mmt in the mid-1990s; worldwide livestock popula-
tion enjoyed gigantic growth rates thanks to our insatiable hunger for
meat cultivated in many societies: cattle population rose by 406 per cent
from 319 million in 1890 to 1294 million in 1990; sheep production
jumped by 432 per cent, the number of goats skyrocketed by 1129 per
cent; the number of pigs soared by 951 per cent and poultry by 1525 per
cent (McNeill 2001, 7, 8, 14, 15, 180, 247, 264, 283, 360).
10 M. FRAUNDORFER
These overwhelming figures give an idea of the unprecedented nature

of human development in the twentieth century. Just to emphasise once
again: the current climatic changes are not unprecedented in the planet’s
history. Sea-level rise, flooding, droughts, desertification, the mass extinc-
tion of species, all this had happened before. The melting of the polar
ice caps is not a novel phenomenon either, considering that the char-
acteristic global temperatures on planet Earth had usually been so high
that the existence of permanent ice in the form of glaciers and polar caps
had been a rare phenomenon (Behringer 2010). What is unprecedented
is the fact that the extraordinary spectacle of human development over
the previous two centuries has triggered a global climate reaction that is
about to change the Earth-system so profoundly, and in such a short time,
that scientists from different academic disciplines agree that the planet has
transitioned into a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.
1.4 Global Governance and the Anthropocene

For many scholars, the Thermo-Industrial Revolution at the beginning
of the nineteenth century plays a decisive role in the emergence of the
Anthropocene. With the reliance on coal as a new dominant energy
source, many human societies set themselves free from former energy
constraints and embarked on a fossil fuel-powered journey that would
pump billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. The Anthropocene
marks the end of the Holocene, the geological epoch that started with
the last ice age approximately twelve thousand years ago. The Holocene
represented relatively stable climate conditions that allowed complex
human civilisations, cities and political and economic systems to emerge.
By contrast, the Anthropocene will be marked by climate unpredictability,
instability and crisis, confronting human societies with unprecedented
challenges.
Today’s global cooperation efforts take place in the context of this new
geological epoch. The global and planetary challenges to be discussed in
this book are all interconnected manifestations of the Anthropocene. But
global governance in the age of the Anthropocene confronts us with an
intriguing puzzle. On the one hand, some of the most extraordinary tech-
nological achievements over the past thirty years were only made possible
through the global cooperation mechanisms typical of global governance.
On the other hand, global governance actors face enormous difficulties in
1 INTRODUCTION 11
developing effective global cooperation efforts to confront the planetary

challenges of the Anthropocene.
The extraordinary achievements I am referring to, such as the Interna-
tional Space Station (ISS), the CERN laboratory and the Event Horizon
Telescope, have pushed the boundaries of our understanding of our
place in the universe in unprecedented ways and would hardly have been
possible without global cooperation.
The creation of the International Space Station in 1998 was first intro-
duced by US President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to expand US
leadership and hegemony in space. It became clear very soon that the
US alone would have been unable to shoulder such a multi-billion-dollar
project. To convince Congress of the viability of this project, the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) developed a multina-
tional initiative including Canada, Japan and European partners. The new
geopolitical situation after the end of the Cold War led to the decision
to also include Russia, the archenemy of the US and Western European
countries during the Cold War. The Russians were eager to accept the
US offer in order to save their own space programme, which had fallen
into disrepair with the collapse of the USSR. After all, the Russians were
the unrivalled leaders in the construction of space stations (Lambright
and Schaefer 2004; Launius 2011). Not only had the USSR launched the
first space stations in the 1970s, the only space station in the early 1990s
floating through Earth orbit was the Russian-led MIR.
Today, the management and functioning of the ISS is a truly global
effort and probably one of the most exceptional achievements of global
governance. The ISS relies on a multitude of space agencies, astronaut
training centres and other support facilities scattered across several coun-
tries and world regions (NASA 2020). While the US space agency NASA
continues to be the lead agency, NASA alone would be unable to manage
the ISS. The entire construction process of the ISS was a multinational
effort with each participating country responsible for constructing one
or several parts and modules of the ISS. The European Space Agency,
for instance, which built one of the laboratories of the ISS, the so-
called Columbus module, is solely responsible for managing this module.
The European Space Agency’s Columbus Control Centre is based in the
German town of Oberpfaffenhofen (ESA 2015). The Japanese contribu-
tion, the Kibo Laboratory Module, is controlled by the Japanese Space
Agency’s Control Centre in Ibaraki Prefecture, north of Tokyo (ESA
2021). The Zarya Module, the functional cargo block, which was the
12 M. FRAUNDORFER
ISS’s first module launched into space, was built and launched by Russia
and funded by the US (NASA 2021b).
The launch of astronauts into space is another case in point. Between
2011, the year of the retirement of the US space shuttle programme,
and 2020, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, in operation since the 1960s,
was the only vehicle capable of transporting astronauts to the ISS. As
a consequence, during the last decade, the only gateway for all astro-
nauts into space was the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, once the
pride of the USSR, where both the first satellite, Sputnik 1, and the first
human, Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, were launched into space. Only
in mid-2020 did the US send once again astronauts to orbit from Cape
Canaveral—in a spacecraft built by the private company SpaceX. In short,
the continuous functioning of the ISS hinges on efficient collaboration
between the US and Russia as well as other partners from Europe and
Japan, with control and command centres and rocket launch pads scat-
tered across several countries and continents. And the US and Russia,
countries that are major rivals in earthly politics, prove to be highly reli-
able partners in guaranteeing the functioning of the International Space
Station. And yet, with Russia’s plans to withdraw from the ISS in 2025,
the future of this success story is becoming more uncertain (Cookson and
Foy 2021).
Another example of successful global cooperation is the European
Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN). Born out of the rubbles of
the Second World War, CERN is a global laboratory for particle physics.
Principally supported by European governments, it is CERN’s mission
to advance scientific discoveries for exclusively pacific means. During the
Cold War, CERN was one of the few places where Western and Soviet
scientists could work together. And today, CERN can be regarded as one
of the most successful global scientific cooperation projects. As a global
or even cosmopolitan lab, it is open to leading scientists from across the
world to push the boundaries of scientific knowledge about the world
and the universe. In 1989, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented
the world wide web, while working at CERN (Griset and Schafer 2011).
In July 2012, a global team of scientists at CERN discovered the Higgs
boson, an elusive particle that had been theoretically predicted by several
physicists in the 1960s, among them Peter Higgs, to explain the mass of
particles. Since its creation in the 1950s, CERN has contributed to the
globalisation of particle physics, turning into a global centre for particle
physics research, not least because of CERN’s 27 km long Large Hadron
1 INTRODUCTION 13
Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator in the world (CERN

2020).
On 10 April 2017, the Event Horizon Telescope took the very first
picture of a black hole. This picture was the result of a global effort,
linking together universities, research centres and telescopes from across
the world. This supermassive black hole, located in the galaxy M87,
about 55 million light-years from Earth, is so far away that not even the
strongest telescopes could distinguish it in the vastness of the universe
(NASA 2021c; Temming 2019). In an unprecedented global effort, the
Event Horizon Telescope project linked together eight radio telescopes
on Earth from North America, Hawaii, Europe, Latin America and the
South Pole to create a virtual Earth-sized radio telescope superior in its
resolution to any single telescope ever built: the Event Horizon Telescope
(Temming 2019). This unprecedented global cooperation effort was able
to make a black hole visible to the naked human eye for the very first time.
As a next step, the project team hopes to move from still-imagery to real-
time videos of space-time of black holes by linking even more telescopes
together (EHT 2019).
By heavily relying on different modes of global cooperation and the
advantages of technological innovation, we are reaching ever deeper into
the mysteries and riddles of the universe. We are highly capable of coop-
erating on a global scale to assemble the most complex structure ever
built by humans in Earth orbit, the International Space Station. We are
also able to cooperate globally to make a black hole visible to the naked
human eye, something that only a few decades ago humans thought did
not even exist. We also excel in global cooperation when it comes to
exploring what the quantum world is made of. But when it comes to
tackling the broad range of human-induced global environmental chal-
lenges on our own planet, we seem to make no substantial progress at
all.
1.5 Organisation of the Book

By providing a systematic and comparative overview of the principal
global governance architecture, as well as dominant actor constellations,
dynamics and processes of the sectors of five interlinked global and plan-
etary challenges (infectious disease outbreaks, global food production,
14 M. FRAUNDORFER
freshwater governance, energy consumption and environmental protec-

tion), this book teases out various aspects of the underlying logic of global
governance in the Anthropocene.
The book explains the intrinsic relationship between the global envi-
ronmental challenges of the Anthropocene and the dominant features of
global governance that have emerged over the past two hundred years.
These dominant features grew out of the very processes and dynamics
that have contributed to the emergence of the Anthropocene. Hence,
dominant global governance processes and dynamics play a major role in
exacerbating many of today’s global environmental challenges.
The book also highlights that over the past two decades the dynamics
and processes of global governance have generated a host of new
transnational approaches to global environmental challenges. Some of
these approaches follow the traditional trajectories of global gover-
nance, pushing us ever deeper into the Anthropocene. Other approaches,
however, radically depart from the past and can potentially point a
way out of the impasse of global governance, breathing new life into
the dynamics and processes of global governance in the age of the
Anthropocene.
This book is organised to understand the historical emergence of
global governance, as well as its dominant contemporary processes and
dynamics, in the context of the emergence of the Anthropocene. We find
ourselves at the threshold of a new age. And global governance structures
are trapped between two worlds; one that reflects the institutions, policies
and ideologies of previous centuries; and another one that is profoundly
reshaped, remoulded and reconfigured through the interrelated set of
those global challenges that are defining the twenty-first century and the
future of humanity.
Chapter 2 (Global Governance and the Anthropocene) casts light
on the entanglements between the emergence of global governance and
the emergence of the Anthropocene. The chapter discusses the principal
driving forces behind the emergence of the Anthropocene and intro-
duces different views on the meaning and origins of this new epoch. In
parallel, the chapter provides a historical overview of the development
of global governance processes since the early nineteenth century. While
the concept of global governance was only coined in 1992, the roots
of contemporary global governance dynamics can be traced back to the
early nineteenth century. Here, the chapter examines the role of prin-
cipal global governance actors, such as states, international organisations,
1 INTRODUCTION 15
NGOs, social movements, cities, companies, philanthropic foundations

and multistakeholder organisations. In this context, the chapter traces the
emergence of different types of international and transnational authority,
discusses the fragmented and gridlocked nature of contemporary global
governance, lays out the dominant economic features of global gover-
nance and draws out the entanglements between geological time and
world time. By combining a historical overview of both the Anthropocene
and global governance, the chapter highlights how global governance
processes and the emergence of the Anthropocene over the past two
centuries are interconnected.
Chapter 3 (Conceptual Toolbox) introduces a conceptual toolbox
assisting in analysing some of the dominant processes and dynamics of
global governance. The chapter starts by characterising the authority of
global governance institutions as compared with authority at the national
and local levels. In this context, the chapter elaborates on the idea of
authority at the international and global levels understood as reflexive
and liquid. The second concept discussed is legitimacy in global gover-
nance. Here, the chapter discusses the institutional and structural sources
of legitimacy and elaborates on (de)legitimation practices of global gover-
nance actors to confirm or contest the legitimacy of global governance
institutions. The third concept introduced is transnational democracy,
summarising different ways of democratising global governance processes.
The chapter then moves on to a discussion centred around the role of
networks and nodes in global governance to elucidate the nodal and
networked character of global governance processes.
Chapter 4 (Global Governance of Infectious Disease Outbreaks)
provides an overview of the global governance of major infectious disease
outbreaks and pandemics over the past two decades. The chapter starts by
painting a picture of the historical impact of infectious disease outbreaks
on human societies and how the global impact of human societies on
the planet’s ecosystems has accelerated the emergence and spread of
infectious diseases on a global scale. Then, the chapter summarises the
historical development of the global health governance architecture over
the past two centuries, highlighting that infectious disease outbreaks have
traditionally driven cross-border cooperation. Through three case studies,
the chapter teases out the principal characteristics of the contemporary
global health governance architecture in confronting infectious disease
outbreaks. These case studies refer to the 2002/03 SARS pandemic,
the 2014–2016 Ebola pandemic and the COVID-19 pandemic. The
16 M. FRAUNDORFER
SARS pandemic was the first global pandemic of the twenty-first century.
The 2014–2016 Ebola pandemic was the most severe Ebola outbreak in
history, when Ebola spread for the first time from Africa to Europe and
North America. The COVID-19 pandemic was caused by the spread of a
coronavirus similar to that responsible for the 2002/03 SARS pandemic.
COVID-19 has become the most devastating global pandemic in the
twenty-first century, seriously affecting the functioning of our globalised
civilisation and leading to economic recessions of historic proportions in
countries across the world. The chapter summarises and compares the
dominant global governance responses to these defining pandemics in
the twenty-first century and assesses the limitations and weaknesses of
the global health governance architecture in reacting to major infectious
disease outbreaks in this century.
Chapter 5 (Global Food Production) explores the dominant features
of the global food system. It starts with an overview of the impact
of global food production processes on the Earth-system, highlighting
that the dominant dynamics of global agricultural production have been
one of the key drivers of the Anthropocene, exacerbating environmental
devastation, deforestation, pollution, freshwater scarcity, infectious disease
outbreaks and species extinction. Then, the chapter summarises the
historical development of the global food system over the past two
centuries, teasing out the principal characteristics of global food produc-
tion in the twenty-first century. In this context, the chapter particularly
dwells on the globalisation of livestock and soybean production to illus-
trate the inherent logic of the global food system and how this logic
has exacerbated many global and planetary challenges. Then, the chapter
examines several new dynamics in the global food system that challenge
its dominant logic. Here, the chapter explains the concepts of food secu-
rity, food justice and food sovereignty and presents the global social
movements behind the concepts of food justice and food sovereignty.
Thereafter, it introduces two case studies which show how approaches
to food insecurity and hunger can be transformed at the national and
transnational levels to pave the way for more ecological and democratic
food production processes. The first case study explains how Brazil’s Zero
Hunger strategy reshaped the global approach to food insecurity and
hunger. The second case study illustrates how the reformed Committee
on World Food Security has inspired more democratic, inclusive and
ecological food governance at the global level.
1 INTRODUCTION 17
Chapter 6 (Transboundary Water Governance) examines the archi-

tecture of transboundary water governance and its dominant approaches
to tackling the global degradation of freshwater resources, such as rivers,
lakes and groundwater aquifers. The chapter starts by highlighting how
freshwater resources have historically shaped human societies and how
our global anthropogenic impact has severely altered the global water
cycle. Freshwater resources are interconnected across national borders
in the form of transboundary rivers, lakes and groundwater reservoirs.
Through overpopulation and urbanisation, the excessive use of pesti-
cides in industrialised agricultural production and the dumping of toxic
waste by chemical and mining companies, freshwater resources across the
world are suffering from increasing pollution and degradation. Next, the
chapter summarises the historical development of the global freshwater
governance architecture since the early nineteenth century, highlighting
that international trade on transboundary rivers has traditionally driven
international cooperation efforts. To exemplify the dominant logic of
freshwater governance, the chapter presents two case studies. The first
case study examines the international governance logic in the South
American Rio de la Plata River Basin, one of the most biodiverse and
agriculturally intensive river basins worldwide. The second case study
examines water conflicts in the Nile River Basin, the world’s longest river.
The two case studies discuss the manifold challenges rivers are facing from
overpopulation, urbanisation, agriculture and energy production. Both
case studies tease out the challenges, shortcomings and weaknesses of
freshwater governance at the regional level that also plague the traditional
freshwater governance architecture at the global level. A third case study
presents a radical alternative to the traditional freshwater governance
approaches discussed in the first two case studies and shifts attention to
several recent cases where rivers were granted legal rights. In this context,
the third case study sheds light on the pioneering decisions taken in
New Zealand, India and Colombia in 2017 to grant legal personhood
to several major rivers in a radical attempt to protect freshwater resources
from environmental degradation.
Chapter 7 (Global Energy Governance) analyses the dominant char-
acteristics underlying global energy production patterns and the global
energy governance architecture. The chapter starts by explaining how
fundamentally energy production patterns have changed in human soci-
eties over the past two centuries and how the introduction of coal in
the nineteenth century and oil in the twentieth century as dominant
18 M. FRAUNDORFER
energy sources have radically transformed human societies and exacer-

bated the environmental challenges of the Anthropocene. In this context,
the chapter also stresses the environmental consequences of alternatives
to fossil fuels, such as nuclear energy, hydropower, as well as solar and
wind energy, and how these alternative energy sources have also left an
indelible mark on the Earth-system. Next, the chapter summarises the
historical development of the global energy governance architecture since
the early twentieth century. After pointing out that the principal processes
and dynamics of global energy governance heavily rely on fossil fuels and
the emission of tonnes of carbon dioxide, two case studies explore in more
detail two movements that have significantly pushed the global renew-
able energy transition. The first case study examines the global smart
city movement, where cities take the lead in transforming global energy
patterns by investing in renewable energy technologies and decreasing
their reliance on fossil fuels. By zooming in on the smart city move-
ment in the United Arab Emirates and India, which have in many ways
pioneered the global smart city movement, the first case study exempli-
fies the broader logic of the global smart city movement. This case study
discusses whether cities and transnational city cooperation can represent a
viable alternative to states and interstate cooperation. The second case
study introduces Germany’s Energiewende, an energy transition model
that is based on intensive citizen involvement and has no less inspired
the global movement towards renewable energies. By comparing both
governance approaches, the chapter discusses if global energy governance
actors have been capable of inventing more effective and ecologically
viable governance approaches to the global energy challenge.
Chapter 8 (Global Environmental Governance) focuses on global
efforts to reduce global CO2 emissions. The chapter examines the histor-
ical development of the global environmental governance architecture
since the early twentieth century. Here, the chapter explicitly contrasts
the governance dynamics that led to the global phase-out of ozone-
depleting substances (responsible for the thinning of the ozone layer in
the 1970s and 1980s) with the UNFCCC climate negotiations that were
set up in the early 1990s to reduce global CO2 emissions. After exam-
ining the shortcomings of the UNFCCC process, the chapter exemplifies
the state-centric logic of the global environmental governance architec-
ture in more detail by zooming in on the major dynamics of global forest
governance and global efforts to halt the deforestation of the world’s
remaining forests. After having established the ineptness of the traditional
1 INTRODUCTION 19
state-centric logic of global environmental governance to deal with these

challenges, the chapter turns its attention to two major global movements
that break with this logic. The first case study introduces the efforts of
cities and transnational city networks, particularly the C40 Cities Group,
the leading transnational network of megacities, to confront climate
change. The case study explores to what extent megacities and their
transnational cooperation efforts can represent an alternative to state-
centric approaches to CO2 emissions reductions. As a specific example,
this case study presents the climate actions of the city of São Paulo. The
second case study looks at transnational mobilisation efforts of indige-
nous communities to tackle deforestation and climate change. The second
case study examines in detail the relationship of indigenous communi-
ties with nature and the differences between indigenous cosmologies and
modern world views. In the same vein, this case study establishes to what
extent a global movement of indigenous peoples has been able to reshape
the global environmental governance architecture according to indige-
nous cosmologies. The chapter concludes by discussing whether these
transnational movements can provide a way out of the impasse of global
environmental governance.
Chapter 9 (Conclusion) briefly summarises the dominant global
governance dynamics in the five sectors of infectious disease, food,
freshwater, energy and environmental governance. It teases out the
tragic entanglements between global governance and the Anthropocene,
symbolised by a fragmented global governance system and weak inter-
national and transnational authorities, a resilient state-centric and neo-
colonial order, as well as capitalist structures and the commodification of
nature. These elements are closely interconnected and make up a vicious
circle, exacerbating today’s global environmental challenges. Then, the
conclusion summarises those case studies that depart from conventional
governance models and point to a novel understanding of global gover-
nance in the age of the Anthropocene. Some of the crucial elements
of these case studies, such as a holistic approach, a democratic and
citizen-based governance logic and close collaboration between demo-
cratic states and democratic civil society actors, could become part of a
virtuous circle of global governance inspiring transformative change in
global governance.
20 M. FRAUNDORFER
References
Abram, N., R. Mulvaney, E. Wolff, J. Triest, S. Kipfstuhl, L. Trusel, F. Vimeux,
L. Fleet, and C. Arrowsmith. 2013. Acceleration of Snow Melt in an Antarctic
Peninsula Ice Core During the Twentieth Century. Nature Geoscience 6 (5):
404–411.
Behringer, W. 2010. A Cultural History of Climate. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Ceballos, G., P.R. Ehrlich, and R. Dirzo. 2017. Biological Annihilation Via the
Ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction Signaled by Vertebrate Population Losses and
Declines. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
of America 114 (30): E6089–E6096.
CERN. 2020. Our History [Online]. Available from: https://home.cern/about/
who-we-are/our-history. Accessed 13 July 2020.
Commission on Global Governance. 1995. Our Global Neighbourhood: The
Report of the Commission on Global Governance. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Cookson, C., and H. Foy. 2021. End of an Era for the International Space
Station as Russia Looks East. Financial Times, April 23 [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://www.ft.com/content/5b20b49d-279a-4258-b4ae-6acbf2
9c8604. Accessed 11 May 2021.
Davies, J. 2016. The Birth of the Anthropocene. Oakland, CA: University of
California Press.
EHT. 2019. Announcement of the Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope
Design Program, September 12 [Online]. Available from: https://eventhori
zontelescope.org/blog/next-generation-event-horizon-telescope-design-pro
gram. Accessed 2 June 2021.
ESA. 2015. Col-CC, April 24 [Online]. Available from: https://www.esa.int/
ESA_Multimedia/Images/2015/04/Col-CC. Accessed 2 June 2021.
ESA. 2021. ISS Utilization: JEM/Kibo-EF (Exposed Facility) Experiments
[Online]. Available from: https://earth.esa.int/web/eoportal/satellite-mis
sions/i/iss-jemef. Accessed 2 June 2021.
Griset, P., and V. Schafer. 2011. Hosting the World Wide Web Consortium for
Europe: From CERN to INRIA. History and Technology 27 (3): 353–370.
Hamilton, C., C. Bonneuil, and F. Gemenne. 2015. Thinking the Anthropocene.
In The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Moder-
nity in a New Epoch, ed. C. Hamilton, F. Gemenne, and C. Bonneuil, 1–13.
Abingdon: Routledge.
Kaufman, D.S., D.P. Schneider, N.P. McKay, C.M. Ammann, R.S. Bradley, K.R.
Briffa, G.H. Miller, B.L. Otto-Bliesner, J.T. Overpeck, and B.M. Vinther.
2009. Recent Warming Reverses Long-Term Arctic Cooling. Science 325
(5945): 1236.
1 INTRODUCTION 21
Lambright, W.H., and A.G. Schaefer. 2004. The Political Context of Technology
Transfer: NASA and the International Space Station. Comparative Technology
Transfer and Society 2 (1): 1–24.
Launius, R.D. 2011. Space Stations: Base Camps to the Stars. In Proceed-
ings of the Thirty-Eighth History Symposia of the International Academy of
Astronautics, Univelt, Inc., Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Lenton, T.M., J. Rockström, O. Gaffney, S. Rahmstorf, K. Richardson, W.
Steffen, and H.J. Schellnhuber. 2019. Climate Tipping Points—Too Risky
to Bet Against. Nature 575: 592–595.
McNeill, J.R. 2001. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History
of the Twentieth-Century World. New York: W. W. Norton.
NASA. 2020. International Space Station: International Collaboration [Online].
Accessed 13 July. Available from: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sta
tion/cooperation/index.html. Accessed 7 Apr 2021.
NASA. 2021a. Global Temperature [Online]. Accessed 13 July. Available
from: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/. Accessed 7
Apr 2021.
NASA. 2021b. Space Station Assembly [Online]. Accessed 13 July. Available
from: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/
space-station-assembly. Accessed 7 Apr 2021.
NASA. 2021c. Discoveries: Highlights of Hubble’s Explorations of the Universe
[Online]. Available from: https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/2017/
highlights-of-hubble-s-exploration-of-the-universe. Accessed 2 June 2021.
Neukom, R., L.A. Barboza, M.P. Erb, F. Shi, J. Emile-Geay, M.N. Evans, J.
Franke, D.S. Kaufman, L. Lücke, K. Rehfeld, A. Schurer, F. Zhu, S. Brönni-
mann, G.J. Hakim, B.J. Henley, F.C. Ljungqvist, N. McKay, V. Valler, and L.
von Gunten. 2019. Consistent Multidecadal Variability in Global Temperature
Reconstructions and Simulations Over the Common Era. Nature Geoscience
12: 643–649.
Neukom, R., N. Steiger, J.J. Gómez-Navarro, J. Wang, and J.P. Werner. 2019.
No Evidence for Globally Coherent Warm and Cold Periods Over the
Preindustrial Common Era. Nature 571 (7766): 550–554.
Rosenau, J.N. 1992. Governance, Order, and Change in World Politics. In J.N.
Rosenau and E.-O. Czempiel (Eds.), Governance Without Government: Order
and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smil, V. 2019. Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Summerhayes, C.P., and J. Zalasiewicz. 2018. Global Warming and the Anthro-
pocene. Geology Today 34 (5): 194–200.
Temming, M. 2019. How Scientists Took the First Picture of a Black Hole.
ScienceNews, April 10 [Online]. Available from: https://www.sciencenews.
org/article/event-horizon-telescope-black-hole-picture. Accessed 7 Apr 2021.
22 M. FRAUNDORFER
Trusel, L.D., S.B. Das, M.B. Osman, M.J. Evans, B.E. Smith, X. Fettweis, J.R.
McConnell, B.P.Y. Noël, and M.R. van Den Broeke. 2018. Nonlinear Rise
in Greenland Runoff in Response to Post-Industrial Arctic Warming. Nature
564 (7734): 104–108.
CHAPTER 2
Global Governance and the Anthropocene:

An Entangled History
2.1 A Very Brief History of the Anthropocene

One of the first scientists to come up with the term of the Anthropocene
was Paul J. Crutzen in 2000. Crutzen, a Dutch atmospheric scientist, had
received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his contributions to
explaining the thinning of the ozone layer (NobelPrize.org 2021). He
felt that the unprecedented impact humanity was having on the planet’s
geology and ecology justified a new term which already existing terms
could not properly summarise. He then realised that Eugene Stoermer,
an ecologist from the US, had been informally using this term since
the 1980s. Both scientists teamed up to provide a first idea of the
Anthropocene by arguing that humanity’s geological impact since the late
eighteenth century had become so profound that the consequences would
shape the planet for millennia to come (Davies 2016, 42–43).
Since the coining of the term in 2000, the engagement with the
Anthropocene has flourished across disciplines of the natural sciences,
the social sciences and the humanities, amounting to different versions
and understandings, and has found its way into mainstream debates hotly
discussed by artists, journalists, politicians, CEOs, environmental activists
and many others. In 2014, the term was included in the Oxford English
Dictionary, defining the Anthropocene as:

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88156-6_2
24 M. FRAUNDORFER
The epoch of geological time during which human activity is considered

to be the dominant influence on the environment, climate, and ecology of
the earth, a formal chrono-stratigraphic unit with a base which has been
tentatively defined as the mid-twentieth century. (Oxford University Press
2021)
While immensely popularised over the last twenty years, the term itself
is not new at all. And scientists have engaged with the idea of anthro-
pogenic climate change since the nineteenth century at least. The Italian
Antonio Stoppani is widely regarded as the first to come up with the
idea in 1873, suggesting that the massive impact of humans on the envi-
ronment through cities, dam-building and mining justifies the naming
of a new geologic epoch, “the Anthropozoic era”, which would last far
into the future. In 1922, the Russian geologist Aleksey Pavlov suggested
that it would make sense to call this geological era the “Anthropogène”,
a term that became popular within Soviet academia (Yeo 2016). Apart
from these isolated endeavours in understanding the human impact on
the environment, it would take until the early twenty-first century before
this idea caught fire.
The meaning of the Anthropocene is contested, and scientists from
different disciplines have hotly debated the term. For the sake of clarity
and brevity, and to do justice to some of these debates, it is helpful
to understand the Anthropocene in three dimensions (Hamilton et al.
2015, 2–3): (1) the geological dimension denotes the beginning of a new
geological epoch which would potentially supersede the geological epoch
of the Holocene, the epoch that started approximately 12,000 years ago
after the last ice age; (2) the Earth-system dimension denotes that all of
Earth’s different spheres (lithosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere
and atmosphere) see a major shift away from the relatively stable climatic
conditions of the Holocene; (3) the civilisational dimension describes
a major impact of the human civilisation on all possible aspects of the
planet’s ecosystems, such as urbanisation, species extinction, resource
extraction, waste dumping and so forth, significantly altering climatic
conditions worldwide.
2 GLOBAL GOVERNANCE AND THE ANTHROPOCENE … 25
2.1.1 The Geological Dimension

The first dimension is embraced by geologists and stratigraphers and is the
hardest to find evidence for, as the naming of geological epochs relies on
evidence found in rocks and sediments. It will take some time before the
manifold consequences of humanity’s actions over the past two centuries
will have made their mark on rock strata and sediment. Several scientists,
however, have made suggestions as to the geological starting point of the
Anthropocene.
The geologists Lewis and Maslin suggest the colonisation of the Amer-
ican continent since the late fifteenth century as an important geological
marker of the Anthropocene. Antarctic ice core records show a significant
reduction in CO2 in the atmosphere between 1570 and 1620, which the
geologists associate with the initial stage of the European colonisation of
the American continent and the massive decline in the numbers of indige-
nous peoples (Lewis and Maslin 2015, 176). This period also prepared the
ground for the emergence of our globalised civilisation several centuries
later:
The arrival of Europeans in the Caribbean in 1492, and subsequent

annexing of the Americas, led to the largest human population replacement
in the past 13,000 years, the first global trade networks linking Europe,
China, Africa and the Americas, and the resultant mixing of previously
separate biotas […]. One biological result of the exchange was the global-
ization of human foodstuffs. The New World crops maize/corn, potatoes
and the tropical staple manioc/cassava were subsequently grown across
Europe, Asia and Africa. Meanwhile, Old World crops such as sugarcane
and wheat were planted in the New World. The cross-continental move-
ment of dozens of other food species (such as the common bean, to the
New World), domesticated animals (such as the horse, cow, goat and pig,
all to the Americas) and human commensals (the black rat, to the Amer-
icas), plus accidental transfers (many species of earth worms, to North
America; American mink to Europe) contributed to a swift, ongoing,
radical reorganization of life on Earth without geological precedent. (Lewis
and Maslin 2015, 174)
Alternatively, the start of the Anthropocene can be pinned down to the

year 1952, which saw the first thermonuclear weapons tests conducted
by the US, the UK and the Soviet Union. These tests dispersed various
radioactive isotopes, among them plutonium, around the globe, leaving
a geological mark in our planet’s soil strata that can be traced for the
26 M. FRAUNDORFER
next hundred thousand years. These traces left a clear geological marker
to distinguish the transition period between two geological epochs, the
Holocene and the Anthropocene (Davies 2016, 104–106).
Other researchers suggest plastic as a viable marker for the Anthro-
pocene. The mass production of plastic is an essential feature of the
developments marking the Great Acceleration after the Second World
War. Today, plastic is so ubiquitous on our planet that it can be found
in its most remote corners, be it on the ocean ground at a depth of
11,000 m, in Arctic sea ice, washed ashore the most far-flung Pacific
islands or inside the stomach of hundreds of thousands of birds and
other marine and land animals. Global plastic pollution, particularly in the
form of microplastics, is so overwhelming that it has found its way into
the planet’s sedimentary record. A group of researchers found plastic in
geological sediments dating back to 1836 and discovered that its concen-
tration significantly increased after 1945, when the mass production of
plastic took off. Hence, the increasing plastic concentration in the plan-
et’s fossil records provides another important marker for the rise of the
Anthropocene (Brandon et al. 2019).
Another group of researchers (Elhacham et al. 2020) found that in
the year 2020 global human-made mass surpassed all living biomass.
While in 1900 anthropogenic mass (that is, human-produced mass such
as concrete, metals, asphalt, bricks, plastic, etc.) “was equal to only 3% of
global biomass […] [,] [a]bout 120 years later, in 2020, anthropogenic
mass is exceeding overall biomass in the world” (Elhacham et al. 2020,
2). For the authors of the study, this finding represents another geolog-
ical marker of humanity’s extraordinary impact on the Earth-system over
the past century.
2.1.2 The Earth-System Dimension

While many discussions in the natural sciences about the Anthropocene
pay special attention to humanity’s unprecedented planetary impact as a
geological force, a proper understanding of this new geological epoch
is not necessarily equivalent to the human age. The key features of the
Anthropocene will continue to exist long after humans have disappeared
from the planet’s surface. Even if we stopped all CO2 emissions from
one day to the other or were driven to extinction within the next few
decades (or centuries), the existing and ongoing disruptions in the Earth-
system would far outlast humanity, transforming the climate for millennia
to come. All these climatic changes rolling towards us with horrifying

speed will eventually trigger climate time bombs, which will only worsen
the scenario. One such ticking time bomb is methane (CH4 ), another
greenhouse gas more than 20 times more potent than CO2 , stored in
large natural reservoirs across the planet. The most critical methane reser-
voirs include permafrost in the Arctic (900 billion tonnes of carbon)
and methane hydrates in the oceans (10,000 billion tonnes of carbon)
(Glikson 2018). The accelerated melting of permafrost and warming of
the oceans could trigger this time bomb within our lifetimes.
These and other ticking time bombs are also known as tipping points:
critical thresholds in the Earth-system that usually take a long time to be
reached. But once they are reached, very often after a long cumulative
process at particular moments in time through very tiny changes, they
abruptly alter the state of an entire system. Arctic permafrost has been
stable for thousands of years, and it might remain so for decades to come.
With constantly rising global temperatures and the cumulative effect of
melting ice sheets, tiny atmospheric changes would be sufficient to cause
the sudden release of tonnes of methane and carbon dioxide with massive
and irreversible destabilising consequences for the entire Earth-system.
Once the critical threshold of the relentless deforestation of the Amazon
rainforest is reached, tiny atmospheric perturbations will suffice to dry up
the entire Amazon basin due to the rainforest’s lost capability to recycle
precipitation in the region.
Similar tipping points that may be crossed in this century exist for
all other major climate phenomena and ecosystems that have largely
contributed to the climate conditions of the last few thousand years, such
as the Indian Summer Monsoon, the West African Monsoon, the Boreal
Forest, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation or tropical coral reefs (Hoegh-
Guldberg et al. 2007; Lenton 2013; Lenton et al. 2008). It is highly likely
that the massive Earth-system changes triggered by one of those time
bombs could rapidly push other parts of the Earth-system to a critical
threshold and beyond. Such a colossal chain reaction would radically alter
the planet’s climate to a degree never experienced by humans before. And
climate scientists argue that we are already in the midst of a “planetary
emergency”, with a global cascade of tipping points approaching which
will irreversibly change the planet’s climate and threaten our civilisation
(Lenton et al. 2019).
28 M. FRAUNDORFER
In Jeremy Baskin’s view, this Earth-system perspective can lend itself

to an ideological interpretation of anthropogenic climate change, univer-
salising humanity and marginalising accounts of the differentiated impact
of some human societies and classes. Rather than humanity as a whole,
climate change has largely been driven by a minority of humans and
particular socio-economic and political structures (2015, 15–16).
Humanity is made one with modern Enlightenment man, the man for
whom “progress”, “growth” and “development” are the dominant goals.
The Indian subsistence farmer, the African herder and the Peruvian slum-
dweller become part of one “humanity” with the inhabitants of the rich
world, despite clearly being very differentially responsible for ecological
devastation and planetary overshoot. (Baskin 2015, 16)
This universal interpretation of the Anthropocene and humanity’s respon-

sibility opens the door to technocratic, authoritarian and technology-
based planetary solutions, such as geoengineering, normalising the impact
of consumer-driven societies and capitalist structures on climate change,
which ultimately have the potential to deepen existing socio-economic
and political divides and exacerbate the climate crisis (Baskin 2015). Tech-
nologies to be employed to geoengineer the planet’s atmosphere are not
sufficiently developed yet. The debate on geoengineering as a promising
technology-based solution to the challenges of CO2 emissions reductions,
however, has already captured the imagination of many natural scientists,
politicians, diplomats and entrepreneurs (see Box 2.1).
Box 2.1: Geoengineering

In 2006, Paul J. Crutzen, the chemist who suggested the term of the
Anthropocene, called for research into solar geoengineering as an alter-
native to the failed political efforts of reducing CO2 emissions. Solar
geoengineering involves attempts to reflect sunlight away from Earth
and cool the climate by injecting chemical substances like sulphur and
hydrogen sulphide into the stratosphere.
This approach is modelled on volcanic eruptions which also throw
tonnes of sulphur into the atmosphere and contribute to a temporary
cooling of global temperatures.
Source Crutzen (2006).
More than that, the debate has already shaped international climate
negotiations. The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement includes “negative emis-
sions” as a viable alternative to achieve CO2 emissions reductions. The
awkward term of “negative emissions” refers to technological efforts to
remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so-called negative emissions
technologies (Nature 2018, 404). Among negative emissions technolo-
gies feature, for example, enhanced weathering, direct air capture and
carbon storage (DACCS), and ocean fertilisation. Enhanced weathering
involves the manipulation of geochemical processes by adding carbonate
or silicate minerals to the oceans and the soil to accelerate the absorption
of CO2 .
Some of these techniques are already used by industrial agriculture to
reduce the acidity of the soil. As a drawback, these techniques depend on
complex mining processes and huge amounts of water. DACCS involves
the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere through liquid absorbents, and
experiments with these techniques have been ongoing for several years.
Ocean fertilisation involves the removal of CO2 from the oceans through
planktonic algae and other microscopic plants (EASAC 2018, 8–9). The
inclusion of recommendations on negative emissions technologies in the
Paris Agreement effectively legitimised the use of geoengineering as a
promising way to tackle the problem of CO2 emissions. And while there
is widespread concern about the effectiveness of these technologies in
tackling CO2 emissions, the belief in these techno-fixes has gained consid-
erable momentum in the governance of CO2 emissions (Corry et al.
2020).
Both in the scientific community and in international political nego-
tiations, geoengineering has become a viable option, or a measure of
last resort, to actively intervene in CO2 emissions reduction efforts and
achieve the breakthrough that three decades of international climate
negotiations have failed to achieve (Boettcher and Schäfer 2017; Pearce
2019). And the more pressing the global climate crisis becomes, the
more seductive and irresistible the siren call of geoengineering will be.
But geoengineering projects have a planetary impact, affecting every
single aspect of the Earth-system, with unpredictable and incalculable
environmental and social consequences (Hobden 2018, 112–116). And
these techno-fixes deflect attention from the socio-economic and political
factors driving climate change.
30 M. FRAUNDORFER
2.1.3 The Civilisational Dimension

The acceptance that we live in a new geological epoch called the Anthro-
pocene comes with two powerful claims (Hamilton et al. 2015, 4–5): The
first claim refers to the fact that humans have become a powerful geolog-
ical force similar to those geological forces that have usually been respon-
sible for profound Earth-system changes in the planet’s history, such as
volcanism, tectonics, shifts in the planet’s orbital movements around the
Sun or the cyclic fluctuations of solar activity (see also Box 2.2). This
means that “natural history and human history, largely taken as indepen-
dent and incommensurable since the early nineteenth century, must now
be thought as one and the same geo-history” (Hamilton et al. 2015, 4).
The second claim highlights that humans (and all other species) on the
planet will face disastrous environmental changes of a magnitude that no
former human generation has ever experienced. This means that the rela-
tive climate stability of the Holocene, the geological epoch of the last
12,000 years, is coming to an end. The Holocene, however, has been
the very epoch in which complex human civilisations evolved along with
complex political, social and economic systems.
Box 2.2: The Great Oxygenation Event

Apart from humans, lifeforms of different sorts, from microorganisms to
vertebrates, have played an important part in shaping and transforming the
planet’s geology and climate for billions of years. One event in the plan-
et’s history might be considered as an analogue to the Anthropocene: the
Great Oxygenation Event. When the planet’s atmosphere lacked oxygen,
the vast explosion of populations of cyanobacteria, more commonly known
as blue-green algae, caused a transformative change of the Earth-system.
The oxygen these bacteria populations produced gradually oxygenated
the atmosphere over the course of millions of years, giving rise to an
atmosphere which allowed more complex species to evolve. Admittedly,
the Great Oxygenation Event dragged on for millions of years, whereas
the human-induced Anthropocene largely emerged within a few hundred
years.
Source Carson (2019).
But when we accept that humanity (or the anthropos) has become a
major geological force, further reflection is needed on what humanity
actually means in this context. In his initial definition of the Anthro-

pocene, Paul Crutzen cautioned that human-induced climatic changes
“have largely been caused by only 25% of the world population” (Crutzen
2002), that is, those humans living in Europe and North America who
have benefitted the most from the economic development and wealth
generated by the Industrial Revolution and the post-Second World War
order. Furthermore, historian Christophe Bonneuil argues that “the
‘anthropos’ that has triggered the Anthropocene is not a merely biolog-
ical agent but the product of complex belief systems” (2015, 21), shaped
by interconnected socio-economic, political and technological processes.
Given the extraordinary development of many human societies over
the past two centuries and its destructive impact on the Earth-system, an
extensive body of literature from the social sciences and Earth sciences
points to this period as crucial to understanding the Anthropocene.
Several scholars, among them Paul Crutzen, divide the Anthropocene
into two stages: the first stage comprises the Industrial Revolution in
the nineteenth century and its ripple-effects until 1945; the second stage
comprises the developments after 1945, also called the Great Acceler-
ation, when human development, economic growth, industrialisation,
urbanisation and population growth rose to unprecedented heights and
entered a new stage of intensity, speed and force, quickly spreading from
Europe and North America to all other world regions, cultures and
societies (Steffen et al. 2007).
But some scientists argue that the Anthropocene started thousands
of years, if not millions of years, earlier. The Earth scientist Andrew
Glikson suggests broadening the time horizon of the Anthropocene and
dividing it into three stages: First, the Early Anthropocene which started
approximately two million years ago when homo ergaster, one of the early
humans, discovered fire. Second, the Middle Anthropocene, starting with
the development of extensive farming. And third, the Late Anthropocene,
marked by the unprecedented human-induced rise of CO2 emissions
as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, which then led to the
Great Acceleration in the twentieth century after the Second World War.
Without the discovery of fire or the development of extensive farming,
the technological innovations leading to the Industrial Revolution would
have been unlikely (Glikson 2013, 91). Recent studies found that exten-
sive anthropogenic transformations of the biosphere started even before
32 M. FRAUNDORFER
the advent of agriculture. That is, the biosphere had already been exten-
sively reshaped by hunting and gathering societies in the late Pleistocene
(more than ten thousand years ago) (Stephens et al. 2019).
Indigenous populations significantly manipulated and modified their
natural environment across the globe thousands of years before Europeans
started to colonise large parts of the world (Williams 2003). As a case in
point, the Māori tribes contributed to species extinction, massive envi-
ronmental degradation and deforestation long before the first Europeans
started to colonise New Zealand in the eighteenth century (Williams
2003, 21–23). And on many occasions, severe environmental degrada-
tion in the form of acute deforestation, soil erosion and water pollution
caused by unsustainable economic growth, extensive agricultural produc-
tion, and overpopulation was a natural by-product of many pre-modern
empires, including the Ancient Maya and Aztek Empires in South and
Central America and the Ancient Roman Empire in the Mediterranean
region (Hughes 2009, 42–48, 73–79; Williams 2003, 57–63, 95–101).
And yet, all these forms of human impact on the Earth-system had
been mostly local and regional, without the transformative global impact
that would justify the naming of a new epoch (Davies 2016, 74–75).
Humanity’s limited impact on the Earth-system changed fundamentally
with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the use of fossil fuels for
energy generation and the unprecedented development of European
and North American societies in the nineteenth and twentieth century.
Since the development of modern industrial societies in the past two
centuries has been closely linked to capitalism (not least in Britain, the
country where the Industrial Revolution took off), several social scien-
tists and Marxist thinkers have looked closer into those socio-economic
and political developments that marked the beginning of a much more
transformative global impact of human actions. To put emphasis on
the significant impact of capitalist ideologies on the Earth-system, these
scholars came up with the term Capitalocene.
In Elmar Altvater’s words, one of the original proponents of the
term Capitalocene, “[n]ature has been reduced to something that can
be valued and traded and used up just as another asset: industrial capital,
human capital, knowledge capital, financial claims, and so forth” (2016,
145). Capitalism can, therefore, be described as an “ideological way of
incorporating nature into capitalist rationality and its monetary calcu-
lus” (2016, 145). According to Parenti, Karl Marx already knew that
non-human nature serves capitalism as a priceless value to its material
accumulation process by providing the fundamental assets capitalism is

built on. Capitalism essentially relies on the exploitation of human and
non-human nature for wealth accumulation (2016, 167–169).
The access to new energy sources (most importantly coal and oil), as
well as the far-reaching consequences of new technological inventions (the
Watt steam engine, the locomotive or the modern factory) in the eigh-
teenth century in Great Britain, propelled the world regions of Europe
and North America into entirely new dimensions, setting these two world
regions apart from other world regions and exacerbating already existing
structural inequalities in the international system. In 1825, Great Britain
alone was responsible for 80 per cent of worldwide CO2 emissions from
fossil fuel combustion and 62 per cent in 1850 (Malm 2016, 13).
To avoid misunderstandings, the environmental historian Jason Moore
broadened the concept of the Capitalocene, clarifying that “the Capi-
talocene does not stand for capitalism as an economic and social system.
[…] Rather, the Capitalocene signifies capitalism as a way of organizing
nature—as a multispecies, situated, capitalist world-ecology” (Moore
2016, 6). Due to this broader conceptualisation, Moore situates the
starting point of capitalism in the times of Christopher Columbus and
the conquest of the Americas rather than the early nineteenth century
(2017, 596). While Moore acknowledges the fact that human societies
and pre-modern empires have cleared vast forest areas for thousands of
years, he emphasises that “[a] radical shift in the scale, speed and scope of
landscape change occurred in the long sixteenth century” in that “[a]fter
1450, […], comparable deforestation occurred in decades, not centuries”
(Moore 2017, 609).
Considering the era of colonialism as a potential starting point of the
Anthropocene also makes sense when looking more specifically at the
developments in the past two centuries. In Malm and Hornborg’s words,
“[a] scrutiny of the transition to fossil fuels in 19th-century Britain […],
however, reveals the extent to which the historical origins of anthro-
pogenic climate change were predicated on highly inequitable global
processes from the start […]. The rationale for investing in steam tech-
nology at this time was geared to the opportunities provided by the
constellation of a largely depopulated New World, Afro-American slavery,
the exploitation of British labour in factories and mines, and the global
demand for inexpensive cotton cloth” (2014, 63).
Moore’s broad view of capitalism as an ideological system to organise
nature and human relationships also allows the inclusion of communist
34 M. FRAUNDORFER
countries (or empires) such as the Soviet Union, which participated in

the capitalist world system geared towards economic growth and devel-
opment and the commodification of nature. The Soviet Union was one
of the leading CO2 emitters and oil producers of the twentieth century.
In the same vein, some of the most devastating environmental disasters
in the history of the twentieth century occurred in the Soviet Union,
among them the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the shrinking of the
Aral Sea (see also Chapter 6). Its successor state, the Russian Federa-
tion, belongs to the major CO2 emitting countries today (Ritchie and
Roser 2017). And in the first decade of the twenty-first century, commu-
nist China, although essentially a state capitalist society, surpassed the
US as the world’s leading CO2 emitting country worldwide due to its
integration into international capitalist structures dominated by transna-
tional corporations, financial flows of foreign direct investment and the
abundance of a cheap and disciplined labour force in the country (Malm
2012).
Apart from an emphasis on capitalist structures, other scholars stress
the role of technology in bringing about the Anthropocene. Fossil fuels
have existed for millennia. But only in the mid-eighteenth century, engi-
neers and inventors in Europe discovered how to effectively harness coal
and oil to free human societies from former constraints and make possible
the unprecedented human development of the nineteenth and twentieth
century.
The sociologist Hermínio Martins argued that the Anthropocene
“could also be called the Technocene, inasmuch as the reasons for that
denomination [of the Anthropocene], which are because of the impact
on the atmosphere of carbon dioxide emissions since the mid-eighteenth
century, have more to do proximately with technological agency than
with the psychophysiological make-up of Homo sapiens sapiens” (Martins
2018, 1). Martins goes even further by suggesting that the Anthropocene
may only be a “subset” of the Technocene because in a few centuries
technology and artificial intelligence will have outlived us. Martins partic-
ularly referred to a post-human world with cyborgs, androids and robots
as major protagonists. Humanity will have evolved into a techno-species,
genetically manipulated and technologically enhanced, as the only way to
survive the unprecedented challenges of anthropogenic climate change—
and ultimately leave planet Earth, venture into the cosmos and settle on
other planets.
The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft represent an intriguing

example of Martins’s thought. Built in 1977 to explore and photograph
the other planets of our solar system, both spacecraft carry welcome
messages destined for any extra-terrestrial life form (that may have the
intelligence to decipher that message), engraved on a gold-plated disc:
a time capsule of humanity from the twentieth century. The journey of
these two spacecraft provided humanity with new information about the
planets of the solar system, the solar system itself and the universe. In
2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to reach interstellar
space (the space between the stars and beyond the bubble of the Sun).
Voyager 2 followed in 2018. In interstellar space, both spacecraft can
travel for thousands of years and longer, floating like a message in a bottle
in the vast dark ocean of the universe—until someone (or something) may
eventually pick it up. Technology like the Voyager spacecraft will prob-
ably outlive our species. These spacecraft will continue to travel through
space as a relic of humanity’s development in the twentieth century when
our species will have long disappeared from Earth and our solar system.
In addition to Voyagers 1 and 2, three other spacecraft (Pioneer 10,
Pioneer 11, and New Horizons) are currently on an interstellar trajectory,
reaching interstellar space in the near future (Redd 2019).
Supporters of the Technocene have a point in emphasising that tech-
nology has been an essential driver of environmental degradation over
the previous two centuries. And yet, technology alone has hardly brought
about the climate crisis. After all, the use of technology is embedded in
complex belief systems, socio-economic relations and historical processes,
such as those teased out by advocates of the Capitalocene.
2.2 A Very Brief History of Global Governance

The definition of the Anthropocene remains hotly debated. The three
different dimensions of the Anthropocene debate (geological, Earth-
system, and civilisational) intricately entwine world-historical events with
geological time horizons and Earth-system transformations. In terms
of world-historical events, the social scientist-inspired emphasis on the
environmental impact of capitalist structures since the early nineteenth
century, fed by capitalist developments stretching back to the European
conquest of the Americas in the late fifteenth century, is particularly
relevant to the scope of this book.
36 M. FRAUNDORFER
As the following sections outline, the roots of today’s global gover-

nance system stretch back to the early nineteenth century. At the same
time, these nineteenth-century roots are embedded in a world-historical
context that stretches back to the European colonisation of the Americas.
As Hamilton et al. (2015, 10) argue, “Politics in the Anthropocene is
about the collision of the system Earth with the system world”. This colli-
sion challenges our understanding of the world and defies our analytical
approaches to politics because of the unprecedented complexity gener-
ated by global environmental changes (Galaz 2014). The political scientist
Victor Galaz speaks of an Anthropocene gap, “a time where we are unable
to grapple, analyse and respond to the major implications induced by our
transgression into a human-dominated planet” (Galaz 2014, viii).
In this light, the next three sections briefly summarise how over the
past two centuries the system Earth happened to collide with the system
world in the form of global governance. The first section traces the
gradual development of international and transnational authority. The
second section briefly summarises the dominant economic features of
global governance And the third section teases out the entanglements
between geological time and world time in the emergence of the global
governance architecture over the last two hundred years.
2.2.1 The Emergence of International and Transnational Authority

The effective exploitation of fossil-fuelled energy sources, the develop-
ment of highly complex, globalised, unequal and interdependent societies
and the use of energy-intensive technologies in the nineteenth and
twentieth century led to an unprecedented phenomenon in interna-
tional politics: the gradual emergence of international and transnational
authority. The past two centuries saw the gradual evolution of permanent
international governance architectures, which allowed the actors of the
international system to cooperate more regularly on transboundary issues
and develop international norms, rules and regulations. The nineteenth
century witnessed the first timid attempts at international decision-making
in Europe, which in the twentieth century would reach unprecedented
heights through the integration of countries from across the globe. As
human development ushered into a new era in the twentieth century,
so did international politics and decision-making, as well as transnational
problem-solving.
2.2.1.1 Shades of International Authority: States

and International Organisations
States have gradually emerged as the most powerful actors in global gover-
nance since the seventeenth century. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) put
an end to several religious wars in Europe, including the Thirty Years’ War
in Central Europe. The signing of the Peace of Westphalia in Münster
and Osnabrück ushered Europe into a new era which over the following
centuries would witness the gradual emergence of the so-called West-
phalian state system: an international system of nation states based on
the key tenets of territorial sovereignty and non-interference, without the
existence of any authority above the state.
The groundwork for the rise of formalised international cooperation,
international organisations and international authority was effectively laid
in 1814/1815 at the Congress of Vienna, which reorganised Europe after
the Napoleonic Wars. Europe’s colonial powers sought to establish a new
international system that guaranteed long-term peace on the European
continent among its imperial powers. In fact, for the first time in history,
Europe’s imperial powers started to govern together through meetings,
summits and other international forums to create a public good, albeit
highly fragile and circumscribed: the maintenance of pan-European peace
and the avoidance of war in Europe. The Congress evolved into a new
authority, unprecedented in international politics, whose essential logic
would later echo the international authority of international organisations
and international groupings like the G7, the G20 and other intergovern-
mental platforms. For the first time, a group of states realised that they
could only govern together, in Concert, to tackle a “transnational” chal-
lenge that threatened the stability and survival of these states (Mitzen
2013).
Thus, it is not wrong to call Vienna the birthplace of global gover-
nance. Eventually, the Congress system, which collapsed and was restored
several times throughout the nineteenth century, gave way to the First
World War. This catastrophe once again brought the entire continent
to its knees—and validated the institutional innovations introduced by
the Congress of Vienna. The establishment of the League of Nations in
1919 and the United Nations in 1945 (after another collapse of Europe’s
civilisation) followed the Concert’s logic of creating institutions through
which states could govern together to tackle a transnational threat and
create a public good: the prevention of a new war and the maintenance
of peace (Mitzen 2013; Murphy 2015, 189–190).
38 M. FRAUNDORFER
In the context of the Congress system, European cities turned

into centres of transnational cooperation and exchange among individ-
uals, communities, companies and other public and private associations,
creating periodic conferences and permanent secretariats, which helped
set political agendas, prepare meetings and conferences, monitor the
compliance with rules, technical standards and regulations (Murphy 2015,
190). The first international organisations of the nineteenth century
would emerge from this gamut of incipient international and transna-
tional administrative work, which in turn became a blueprint for the
vast number of international organisations, agencies and bodies of the
twentieth century (Murphy 2015, 189–190).
When in early nineteenth-century Vienna and Europe the foundations
of global governance were laid, European colonial powers dominated the
world through their vast colonial empires in the Americas, Africa and Asia.
And the dominant structures of international, transnational and global
governance were deeply pervaded by a colonial logic (Murphy 2015,
191). Today’s deeply entrenched socio-economic and political inequali-
ties in global governance between different world regions, between actors
from Europe/North America and other parts of the world, between
Anglo-American/Eurocentric and Asian, African or Latin American
perspectives, norms and worldviews stem from these colonial beginnings.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the first standing interna-
tional governance mechanisms emerged, which for the first time allowed
regular cooperation and decision-making on transboundary issues (see
also Box 2.3). The International Telegraph Union (ITU), created in
1865, can be credited as the first international organisation in history.
The first commercial telegraphic service opened in London in 1839, and
the Morse code was invented in the US by Samuel Morse in 1844. The
ever more expanding network of telegraphic wires across national borders
and continents in the first half of the nineteenth century forced Euro-
pean powers to forge cross-border agreements and treaties, culminating
in establishing the International Telegraph Union. This telecommuni-
cations revolution received a further push with Scottish-born inventor
Alexander Graham Bell’s patent of the telephone in the US in 1876,
making long-distance communication among people a new reality.
Box 2.3: Europe’s Geography

The geographic particularities of nineteenth-century Europe as a continent
with numerous small and middle-sized states, kingdoms, duchies and city-
states made cross-border cooperation much more likely to emerge in this
part of the world than anywhere else.
This peculiar geography gave rise to a hotchpotch of geophysical
borders, slicing up the continent into small bits and pieces and adding
a transboundary dimension to lots of conflicts and policy areas that just
did not exist to a similar extent in other world regions.
One decade after the creation of the International Telegraph

Union, the Universal Postal Union (UPU) was established in 1874 in
Bern to coordinate international postal services in Europe as a response
to increasing international trade, mounting dissatisfaction with high inter-
national postal charges and the ambition to harmonise technical standards
(ITU 2019a, b; Zacher and Sutton 1996). Both organisations continue
to exist as UN specialised agencies: the International Telegraph Union
as the International Telecommunication Union now headquartered in
Geneva, and the Universal Postal Union under the same name and still
headquartered in Bern.
Following several infectious disease outbreaks in Europe and the Amer-
icas and the creation of some informal governance mechanisms, the very
first international health organisation, the International Sanitary Bureau,
was born in 1902 in Washington, DC (which after the Second World War
turned into the Pan-American Health Organisation [PAHO], the oldest
existing international health organisation in the international system).
One of the forerunners of today’s World Health Organisation, L’Office
International d’Hygiene Publique, dates back to 1907 (McCarthy 2002).
And the creation of the League of Nations in 1920 became the most
ambitious attempt at that time to cooperate on matters of war and peace
beyond state borders. The League of Nations was accompanied by two
further international organisations: the Permanent Court of International
Justice and the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The Permanent
Court of International Justice (transformed after the Second World War
into the International Court of Justice) became the first standing and
fully established international court allowing arbitration between states.
The International Labour Organisation survived as the only international
organisation of the League of Nations system during the political quakes
of the Second World War. After its integration into the UN system after
40 M. FRAUNDORFER
the Second World War, it has become the UN’s longest-living specialised
organisation.
The technological leaps in aviation in Europe and North America in the
early twentieth century further boosted international cooperation. Avia-
tion pioneers created the first successful aircraft, crossing large distances
and state borders, and the first commercial airlines were born. The
technological developments in aviation also spurred international coop-
eration, most importantly embodied by the International Civil Aviation
Organisation from 1944 and the International Association of Transport
Airlines founded by the world’s airlines in 1945 (Zacher and Sutton 1996,
81–126).
The temporary rupture of the Second World War did not put an end to
the growth of international authority. The creation of the United Nations
system in 1945 rescued many ideas of international decision-making sown
in the first two decades of the twentieth century. By building on these
internationalist ideas, the international system ushered into a new era
of institutionalised intergovernmental decision-making. The UN system
with its principal UN bodies—UN Secretariat, UN Security Council,
UN General Assembly, UN Economic and Social Council, Interna-
tional Court of Justice and the UN Trusteeship Council (suspended in
1994)—along with the UN’s specialised and affiliated agencies—FAO,
WHO, ILO, UNESCO, IMF, World Bank, etc.—became the funda-
mental building block of the new international order of the twentieth
century in existence until this very day.
The European Coal and Steel Community, which came into force in
1952, laid the ground for creating the European Economic Commu-
nity in 1957 and decades later, in 1992, the European Union, the most
ambitious and far-reaching regional integration project in history. These
ambitious cooperation efforts in Europe were complemented by a series
of integration projects in other world regions, albeit far less ambitious
and successful: among them the Arab League in 1945, the Organisa-
tion of American States (OAS) in 1948, the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967, the Pacific Islands Forum in 1971, the
Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in 1973, the Economic Commu-
nity of West African States in 1975, the Gulf Cooperation Council in
1981, the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) in South America in
1991, the African Union in 2002 and many others. Apart from these
major examples of regional integration, further regional organisations and
initiatives would pop up across the globe to institutionalise the ideas of
economic liberalisation, human rights, democracy and ever closer coop-

eration among neighbouring states on a series of economic, political and
social issues that no state could tackle on its own.
Despite the Cold War and other crises, conflicts and proxy wars that
overshadowed the second half of the twentieth century, institutionalised
intergovernmental cooperation became a new imperative and an indis-
pensable norm in the international order. Since the end of the Second
World War, international organisations have become major actors in the
international order, firmly entrenching the new concept of international
authority: the capacity of international organisations to make decisions
that are followed and complied with by a critical number of states
from across the world. Almost negligible before the Second World War,
the developments after 1945 turned the phenomenon of international
authority into a new reality in the international system (Zürn 2018, 111;
see also Box 2.4).
Box 2.4: The Great Acceleration of International Authority

In Anthropocene debates, the post-Second World War period is usually
known as the Great Acceleration. Not only did human development
accelerate in unprecedented ways in Europe and North America before
spreading across the globe. International authority also accelerated, deep-
ened and broadened in ways never seen before in the international
order.
This was due to the rise of the US as the new hegemon in the West
and the US–led commodification of oil as the new defining energy source.
Between 1938 and 1973, world oil consumption skyrocketed from 265
million tonnes to 2765 million tonnes.
Sources Bonneuil and Fressoz (2016, 116–121), M’Gonigle and Zacher
(1979, 14–15).
2.2.1.2 Shades of Transnational Authority: Cities, Social

Movements, Companies, Philanthropic Foundations
and Multistakeholder Organisations
Besides the rise of international organisations and the increasing hold
of international authority on the processes and dynamics in the interna-
tional system, the twentieth century also witnessed the gradual emergence
of transnational authority, promoted by the growing influence of an
increasing number of non-state actors, such as cities, social movements,
42 M. FRAUNDORFER
companies, philanthropic foundations and multistakeholder organisations.

The growing importance of transnational authority is another reflection
of the ever more transnational and transboundary realities of the interna-
tional system. Along with states, the actions of non-state actors have had
a defining impact on human development over the past two centuries and
the emergence of today’s global environmental challenges.
Cities and Transnational City Networks

Many of the cities we live in are much older than the state whose nation-
ality we hold. Athens is much older than the nation state of Greece.
Rome was already a major world city (and a major empire) two thou-
sand years ago, long before the nation state of Italy came into existence.
Lots of cities in Europe with their preserved medieval centres, castles and
fortifications have a history stretching back a thousand years and were
economic powerhouses and European-wide centres of commerce and
trade long before the so-called Westphalian (or state-centric) order started
to take shape. Cities created their own trade alliances to form powerful
economic trading blocks. The Hanseatic League in Northwestern and
Central Europe included cities as diverse as Lübeck, Hamburg, Riga,
Gdansk, Novgorod, Bruges and London. In its heyday in the fourteenth
century, the Hanseatic League wielded substantial economic, diplomatic,
political and military power. Cities in other world regions are even older.
Damascus, in today’s war-torn Syria, is one of the oldest continually
inhabited cities in the world, with a history stretching back more than
10,000 years (UNESCO 2020). Given this millennial history of many
cities worldwide, it is not surprising that many early nation states were
born out of cities and their hinterlands (Smil 2019, 357).
The phenomenon of urbanisation (mass-scale migration from the
countryside to cities) is a fundamental characteristic of our times and
essentially linked to the emergence of global environmental challenges.
Urbanisation started in a few countries in the eighteenth century, then
accelerated in the nineteenth century and reached unprecedented dimen-
sions in the twentieth century (Smil 2019, 336). This development
transformed cities into sizeable actors driving the emergence of global
challenges, such as food insecurity, water and air pollution, environmental
degradation and greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, London’s popu-
lation rose from 600,000 in 1700 to 1.1 million in 1801, before its
population growth received a massive push jumping to 6.5 million in
1901 (Smil 2019, 336). Today, London’s population stands at roughly 9
million. Together with other megacities worldwide, London has become

a crucial gateway and critical node in the globalised flows of trade,
commerce, finance, transport and digital technologies (Curtis 2016;
Sassen 2001). Today’s megacities are the nerve centres of our globalised
world (see also Box 2.5).
Box 2.5: The City Hubs of Global Governance

Europe, and particularly Vienna, can not only be regarded as the birthplace
of global governance. Still today, most of the actions of global governance
take place in European or North American cities. The three major hubs
of global governance are New York City, Geneva and Vienna. New York
City headquarters the UN; Geneva hosts an almost indefinite number of
international organisations (such as the ITU, WHO, WTO, ILO), NGOs
(such as MSF or ICRC), multistakeholder organisations and transnational
networks and initiatives; Vienna headquarters the OSCE, OPEC, the IAEA
and a range of other UN programmes and agencies.
Other essential city hubs in global governance are Paris (UNESCO,
IEA, OECD), Bonn (UNFCCC, UNCCD), Rome (FAO, WFP, IFAD),
Washington, DC (World Bank, IMF) and Brussels (EU institutions).
City locations of global governance outside of Europe are still very
rare and include Nairobi (UNEP), Abu Dhabi (IRENA) and Yokohama
(ITTO).
Some of these megacities have joined forces to form megaregions that

are economically more powerful than many states. Asia’s largest megare-
gion, Greater Tokyo (40 million people), compares to Spain in terms of
population and economic output. The largest megaregion in the world,
Bos-Wash, a conglomeration of the US cities Boston, New York, Philadel-
phia and Washington, DC (50 million people), if considered a country of
its own, would economically outperform countries like the UK or Brazil
(Florida 2019). In the year 2000, more than half of the human population
lived in cities or urban spaces. And in 2050, this proportion is projected
to grow to roughly two-thirds of the world population (UN 2018).
Cities concentrate in extreme forms the vast political, social, economic
and environmental implications of today’s global challenges. As the most
complex and intensive civilisational structures created by humans, they
devour enormous amounts of resources (Smil 2019, 342–343). The daily
realities in megacities in the global south, such as Cairo, Jakarta, Johan-
nesburg, Lagos, Mexico City, Mumbai and São Paulo, are often described
44 M. FRAUNDORFER
as dystopian. Polluted air and polluted rivers, gridlocked traffic and

collapsing public infrastructures, overpopulation and segregated urban
spaces, extreme poverty and extreme wealth side by side. The conse-
quences of climate change only add to these stress factors in cities. Water
shortages, power outages in times of drought and severe flooding during
the rainy season have become frequent phenomena in cities worldwide.
Many megacities were built in coastal areas or delta regions, further aggra-
vating the environmental degradation of these often highly fragile and
biodiverse regions. Around 65 million people live in Guangdong’s Pearl
River Delta (Smil 2019, 350). Roughly 39 million people live scattered
across several megacities in the Nile River Delta. And about 160 million
people live in the Rio de la Plata River Basin in South America (see
Chapter 6). If this were not enough, these cities also face the looming
threats of rising sea levels.
The unabated devastation of biodiversity driven by the rapid spread
of urban areas across the planet has also significantly facilitated infectious
disease outbreaks. Wet markets in megacities in Asia and Africa, where
wild animals are slaughtered and sold under inappropriate hygienic condi-
tions, are major hotspots of the transmission of viruses from animals to
humans. This happened, for instance, with SARS-CoV-2, which prob-
ably emerged in a wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019
and spread across the world in a matter of weeks, leading to the worst
global pandemic in the early twenty-first century (see Chapter 4). Given
that many cities are highly integrated into the globalised political and
economic system, they have turned into hotspots of virus transmission,
providing the perfect conditions for a virus to spread quickly and simul-
taneously to several countries and world regions. The SARS epidemic in
China in 2002/03 only started to spread globally through infected trav-
ellers and businesspeople who passed through Hong Kong, Asia’s major
airport hub, and travelled on to several other destinations in the region
and worldwide (see Chapter 4).
Since the 1990s, cities have increasingly joined forces to tackle global
environmental challenges through transnational city networks. These
transnational initiatives ambitiously aim to turn cities from a part of the
problem into a part of the solution. Today, transnational city networks
and platforms have become a crucial characteristic of global gover-
nance. Some of the most influential transnational city networks today
are ICLEI, UCLG and C40. ICLEI–Local Governments for Sustain-
ability, launched in 1990, links together local and regional governments
to represent the interests of more than 1750 cities, towns and regions
from across the globe to develop urban solutions to global environ-
mental challenges. UCLG–United Cities and Local Governments, created
in 2004, is a global movement of municipal governments seeking to
localise global challenges and develop local approaches to the global chal-
lenges of sustainable development. The C40 Cities Group, in contrast,
reflects the reality of today’s megacities. Launched in 2005, the C40
Cities Group brings together more than 90 megacities in several transna-
tional theme networks to jointly tackle some of the major challenges
these cities are facing today, such as sea-level rise, air pollution, water
pollution, the production and distribution of food, waste collection,
energy consumption, transportation and urban planning. These transna-
tional networks have become influential transnational authorities, shaping
the global agenda on global challenges, participating in the UNFCCC
climate summits and pushing state governments into more decisive action
on climate change (Acuto 2013; Castán Broto and Bulkeley 2013;
Fraundorfer 2017).
NGOs and Social Movements

The first civil society organisations came into existence in the nineteenth
century. The Anti-Slavery Society, launched in 1839 to fight against
slavery worldwide and still active today to tackle modern-day slavery,
can be regarded as the first international NGO (Cunneen 2005). The
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was created in 1864
and has played a leading role in shaping international human rights law.
Through its lobbying activities, the ICRC pushed states to adopt the
Geneva Conventions, international rules that introduced the humani-
tarian treatment of wounded combatants in wars and conflicts (Forsythe
and Rieffer-Flanagan 2016).
The twentieth century witnessed another wave of NGOs that came
into being during and after the Second World War. OXFAM was created
in 1942 in Oxford to help people affected by famines and has become
one of the leading NGOs worldwide with a global network of offices
and supporters. Today, OXFAM shapes the global agenda on a broad
range of issues related to poverty, food security and food production.
CARE (Cooperative for Resistance and Relief Everywhere), another major
humanitarian aid organisation, was initially created by US charities in
1945 to provide food to starving Europeans as a consequence of the
Second World War. CARE’s food aid took the form of food packages
46 M. FRAUNDORFER
(so-called CARE packages). Today, CARE’s agenda is global, focusing on

emergency relief and development projects across the world.
These few examples show that NGOs in the international system have
a two-century-long history. And occasionally, these NGOs had a major
impact on shaping international law and the global agenda. In general,
however, NGOs remained marginal actors in the international system for
a very long time. This only changed after the end of the Cold War. The
1990s saw an unprecedented rise in the number of NGOs in the inter-
national system. With almost 9000 new international non-governmental
organisations created in the 1990s alone, that decade saw the greatest
expansion of non-governmental organisations in the history of the inter-
national system (Weiss 2013, 16). And their profound impact could be
felt centre stage. The 1992 Earth Summit (the United Nations Confer-
ence on Environment and Development) in Rio de Janeiro proved to be a
monumental event, turning the city of Rio de Janeiro for a few days into
the centre of the world. Representatives of all UN member states met
with representatives of more than 2000 representatives of NGOs, local
and indigenous communities to discuss the way ahead on global chal-
lenges such as climate change, development, deforestation, biodiversity
and the reduction of CO2 emissions. The summit’s discussions, debates
and negotiations kicked off a new global agenda on global development
and environmental issues, inspiring a range of new intergovernmental
mechanisms. Among those mechanisms features most prominently the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),
the principal mechanism to reduce CO2 emissions.
NGOs and social movements also started to change the political
dynamics of the international order in other areas. In 1992, a coalition
of more than 1000 NGOs from across the world launched an interna-
tional campaign to ban antipersonnel landmines. This global coalition,
along with like-minded countries like Canada and Norway, successfully
pressured states into negotiating a Mine Ban Treaty, adopted in 1997, to
ban antipersonnel landmines worldwide (Cameron 1999; Goose 1998).
From 1995 onwards, a small coalition of civil society organisations, which
grew to more than 2500 NGOs worldwide, lobbied to establish an
International Criminal Court, which was finally created in 2002 (Glasius
2008).
NGOs and social movements have also used their new-found clout
to challenge and resist the dark sides of this ever more globalised
world, that is, those neoliberal policies which, after the demise of the
Soviet Union, became the guiding ideology among governments, inter-

national organisations and private actors. Their global protest campaigns
are directed against the growing inequalities both within countries and
across developed and developing countries and the hollowing out of
democratic principles through the unregulated profit-seeking behaviour
of major transnational corporations. Global social movements like La
Via Campesina, the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transac-
tions and For Citizens’ Action (ATTAC) and transnationally organised
NGOs like ActionAid, Oxfam, Greenpeace or Médecins Sans Frontières
(Doctors Without Borders) have organised global campaigns against
unfair international trading rules enforced by the World Trade Organisa-
tion (WTO), the neoliberal policies of the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), regional trade agreements and the invasive role of multinational
private companies.
Meetings of the World Economic Forum or the summits of the leading
heads of government, be it the G7, G8 or G20 summits, have regularly
been accompanied by global social protests. The World Social Forum,
created in 2001 in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, has served as the
major institutionalised response of social movements to the neoliberal
paradigm of globalisation. In its annual meetings, social movements and
organisations come together from across the world to debate alternative
versions of globalisation and development.
In the early 2000s, a global AIDS movement, which campaigned
for universal access to AIDS treatment, allied with like-minded states
like Brazil to challenge international legislation on the intellectual prop-
erty rights of medicines and won several important battles to reduce
the prices of these medicines against such powerful countries like the
US and powerful pharmaceutical companies from the US and Europe
(Fraundorfer 2015). In 2005, a small number of people in Australia
were inspired by the achievements of the International Campaign to Ban
Landmines in the 1990s and formed a group that soon grew into a
global movement called the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear
Weapons (ICAN) to campaign for a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons.
For their efforts, ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017
(twenty years before, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize). Despite strong opposition from
nuclear-armed states, ICAN and countries without nuclear weapons were
successful in advocating for the negotiation of the UN Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017, adopted by the UN General
48 M. FRAUNDORFER
Assembly in the same year (Ruff 2018). Now, ICAN is the leading
movement to monitor the implementation of the treaty.
Over the past century, millions of local peasants and small-scale farmers
were disenfranchised, marginalised and pushed into poverty and precar-
ious living conditions through the accumulated power of multinational
companies, market-dynamics and international legislation. Represented by
the global grassroots movement La Via Campesina, launched in 1993,
these communities have regained their voice and turned into an author-
itative global force to challenge the structures of injustice and inequality
in the global food system (see Chapter 5). Their efforts have challenged
the ways food is consumed and produced worldwide.
World-renowned scientists around the globe have lent their authori-
tative voices to global movements to raise awareness about and reinforce
efforts to confront climate change, environmental degradation and species
extinction. During the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak in Western Africa, the
NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was for several months, together
with other minor NGOs, the only international actor responding to the
crisis. MSF set up an extraordinary mission to treat thousands of infected
during the outbreak before state governments, international organisations
and aid agencies finally came to help (see Chapter 4).
Although civil society organisations continue to act as mere observers
in the UN, they are involved in the decision-making processes of lots
of other transnational organisations, platforms and mechanisms, which
have come into existence since the 2000s. As transnational authorities,
civil society organisations have shaped the global agenda through their
global campaign efforts and monitoring and verification activities. In
their transnationally organised campaigns, they raise awareness about a
variety of transnational issues, naming and shaming governments for their
inaction and mobilising citizens in different countries to challenge and
question their governments.
Major international NGOs and global movements like OXFAM, MSF,
La Via Campesina, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are
versed in presenting themselves as moral actors standing up for citi-
zens’ human rights and environmental concerns against powerful state
governments and companies. Many NGOs and global social movements
have successfully connected citizens across different countries and world
regions on transnational issues like climate change, food production or
infectious diseases. In their campaigning efforts, some of these globally
organised NGOs have successfully woven compelling narratives about the
relevance of a global mindset, a global citizenry or a global consciousness

to raise awareness about global issues and unite citizens from across the
world in global movements.
Multinational Companies and Philanthropic Foundations

Like cities and civil society actors, globally acting companies are not a new
phenomenon at all. The predecessors of today’s multinational companies
can be found in the colonial era. The endeavours of the British East
India Company (1600–1874), the Compagnie française des Indes occi-
dentales (French East India Company, 1664–1769) and the Vereenigde
Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company, 1602–1799) were
notorious for looting and extracting India’s wealth and resources for
the benefit of private traders and European colonial powers (Dalrymple
2019). The United Fruit Company (1899–1970) became one of the
most influential companies in the world in the first half of the twen-
tieth century by globalising and commoditising the banana trade and
turning this tropical fruit into an everyday food staple in North America
and Europe. In its heyday, the US-based company exercised a degree of
absolute hegemony over Central American countries exploiting banana
workers, stealing vast land areas for banana plantations and controlling
Central American governments like puppets. For the benefit of private
interests and corporate greed, the United Fruit Company incited violence,
bribed and intimidated Central American presidents and government offi-
cials, used military force and spread poverty and misery across Central
American societies (Bucheli 2005; Dosal 1993; Striffler and Moberg
2003).
This dark legacy is alive and kicking in the global governance system
of the twenty-first century. The dynamics of globalisation have particu-
larly favoured multinational companies, dominating all aspects of global
governance. The global food system and the global production of food
are dominated by a handful of globally acting corporations from Europe,
North America and Brazil (see Chapter 5). In global health governance,
powerful pharmaceutical companies from Europe and North America
dominate the research and development process of medicines and diag-
nostics (see Chapter 4). In global environmental and energy governance,
oil companies have played a crucial role in lobbying powerful govern-
ments to delay action on climate change. The internet, the principal
technology that has driven the major changes in the global system since
the 1990s, is in the hands of companies like Microsoft, IBM, Apple, and
50 M. FRAUNDORFER
Facebook (or Meta). Microsoft, for instance, has a permanent office to the
UN in New York and the EU in Brussels (Microsoft 2020). And multina-
tional companies are active participants in many global platforms, shaping
the global agenda according to their interests and lobbying governments
to adopt international legislation in their favour.
Driven by profit-maximisation with short-term horizons, companies
do not have an immediate interest in tackling global challenges. And
driven by capitalism as the dominant ideology of the global governance
system, companies hold a carte blanche to exploit labour forces and
environmental resources.
Many tycoons who become rich with their companies or other
wealthy and well-established individuals found philanthropic foundations
to support charity work and social services, donate to public causes or
provide a form of development aid. The US-based Rockefeller Founda-
tion, created in 1913, used John D Rockefeller’s eyewatering profits from
his oil business to shape institutions, ideas and practices in the US and
worldwide by investing in health, education, agriculture and the sciences
(Birn 2014). In the years between the two world wars, the Rockefeller
Foundation became one of the most influential actors in shaping health
policies and responses to infectious diseases across the world. Without the
vital financial support of the foundation, the League of Nations Health
Organisation (LNHO), one of the WHO’s predecessors, would not have
been able to carry out its international mandate (Youde 2013, 143–146).
After its creation in 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
established itself as the twenty-first century equivalent of the Rockefeller
Foundation. With the profits from his former company Microsoft, Bill
Gates has turned the foundation into a globally acting funding agency,
investing in education, health care, research on infectious diseases, vaccine
delivery, agricultural development, water, sanitation & hygiene, and many
other development issues in the US and worldwide. Within two decades,
the foundation has become one of the most powerful funders in global
health governance. In terms of financial contributions to the WHO, the
foundation even dwarfs lots of powerful countries from the global north.
In the year 2014/2015, for example, the foundation donated roughly
US$440 million to the WHO. This was more than the amount of other
countries’ financial contributions, such as the UK (~US$398 million),
Norway (~US$ 99 million) or Japan (~US$161 million), all of which are
major funders in global health governance (Harman 2016, 356).
The foundation sits on lots of executive boards of major transnational

health governance mechanisms and global public–private partnerships,
funding transnational vaccine alliances, initiatives accelerating the research
and development of medicines and diagnostics, and emergency prepared-
ness responses to infectious disease outbreaks. With apparently endless
pots of cash and its participation in almost all major multistakeholder
mechanisms that emerged in global health governance over the past two
decades, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has become a heavyweight
in shaping the global agenda, influencing how to tackle global challenges
and how to understand global governance.
Multistakeholder Organisations
Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, intergovernmental institutions have
been complemented by so-called multistakeholder organisations. These
platforms bring together representatives of almost all the different actors
crowding global governance today: states, international organisations,
NGOs and social movements, multinational companies and philanthropic
foundations. In contrast to the model of intergovernmental organisations,
where decision-making is limited to state actors only, in multistakeholder
organisations, several groups of actors (governments, civil society, private
actors, international organisations, individuals) take joint decisions, and
all of the representatives of the given groups have a say in how to govern
the organisation. This phenomenon was significantly promoted by the
unfolding impact of internet technology.
As telegraphy and other telecommunication technologies created
incentives for the first real attempts at international cooperation in the
mid-nineteenth century, so has internet technology. The vast new possi-
bilities of the world wide web have boosted new forms of international
and transnational cooperation since the 1990s. It has become much easier
for citizens, NGOs and social movements to organise across national
borders and form global movements. Internet technologies significantly
aided the spectacular growth of NGOs and social movements. In the same
vein, the internet has facilitated the rise of new governance models which
had been unthinkable before the internet revolution.
The organisation of international mass events like the 1992 Earth
Summit or the mass mobilisation of global civil society coalitions
committed to a particular global cause would have hardly been possible
without the new possibilities of the internet that made instant commu-
nication across different continents, time zones and cultures a widely
52 M. FRAUNDORFER
accepted reality. The emergence of the term global governance in the early
1990s coincided with the intensification of political, economic, social,
health and environmental challenges that had been largely blocked out
by the decades-long military confrontation of the two superpowers during
the Cold War.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international
standards-setting organisation for the world wide web, was founded, and
is still led, by Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the world wide web.
Responsible for the development of the world wide web’s standards,
protocols and guidelines, national governments and traditional interna-
tional organisations have no control over the organisation’s work. Instead,
the organisation is governed by internet infrastructure producers and
consumers (Murphy 2015, 194).
In 1998, the creation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN) marked yet another turn in the deepening of
transnational authority and a further move away from traditional notions
of international authority. Established to organise and regulate the inter-
net’s key functions, including the distribution of top-level domains and
Internet Protocol addresses (IP addresses), ICANN represents one of
the first governance mechanisms exclusively controlled and governed
by non-state actors. Albeit based in the US (California), ICANN is a
non-profit corporation, rather than an intergovernmental organisation,
governed by internet experts rather than government representatives. In
fact, government representatives are only involved in ICANN as observers
(Kleinwachter 2003; Mueller and Chango 2008).
In today’s global governance, both intergovernmental and multistake-
holder decision-making models exist side by side. However, the multi-
stakeholder model has become the dominant governance form in many
transnational institutions, platforms and organisations established since
the 2000s. In the global governance of food security, the Committee on
World Food Security, reformed in 2009, has turned into the leading plat-
form for all stakeholders to discuss and negotiate the global agenda on
food security. The committee exists alongside the Food and Agriculture
Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), which follows the traditional
model of intergovernmental decision-making.
In other global governance sectors, the multistakeholder model has
entirely replaced the intergovernmental model. A case in point is the
global regulation of the internet. The central organisation, ICANN, is
governed by a multitude of technical stakeholders, including civil society,
internet experts, regional internet registries, country top-level domain

registries and so forth. Governments, however, are relegated to no more
than an advisory role. The emergence of the multistakeholder model in
global governance has been closely associated with the further intensi-
fication of the globalised, interdependent and interconnected dynamics
of global governance since the 2000s. The multistakeholder approach
tends to make decision-making at the global level more inclusive and
democratic, as it is able to reflect the complex multi-actor reality of
global governance much more adequately than the intergovernmental
model. But multistakeholderism is far from perfect (Bäckstrand 2006;
Fraundorfer 2018; Macdonald 2008). Criticism relates to the propor-
tion and composition of the different stakeholder groups, the selection
processes for those supposed to represent these stakeholders and the more
general question of (in)equality and power. In the case of civil society,
all too often stakeholder models are dominated by powerful and well-
connected NGOs from highly developed countries, which creates new
power imbalances and inequalities.
2.2.1.3 A Fragmented, Gridlocked and Overcrowded Architecture

All these global governance actors (states, international organisations,
cities, NGOs and social movements, companies, philanthropic founda-
tions and multistakeholder organisations) are so diverse in their organ-
isational outlook, mindsets, interests, resources and capabilities that the
obstacles to effective cooperation are higher than ever before. Essentially,
emerging multipolarity in the international system complemented by
growing fragmentation and worsening institutional inertia in long-lived
international organisations and agencies complicates the effectiveness of
global governance responses to global challenges (Hale et al. 2013,
2017).
After the Second World War, the new multilateral order with the UN
system at its centre was essentially shaped by a tiny group of state actors
from North America and Europe. In the same vein, the dynamics leading
to a more interconnected, interdependent and globalised system in the
1990s were dominated by the very same powers, particularly the US as
the only remaining superpower after the collapse of the USSR. In the
twenty-first century, the landscape has fundamentally changed.
Today we are moving towards a multipolar system with several
powerful states and trading blocks. While the US continues to be the
most important military power, its political, economic and military might
54 M. FRAUNDORFER
is increasingly challenged by an ever more assertive China. The EU is

the most powerful economic trading bloc and a regulatory superpower.
Continental powers like Brazil and India have reshaped global governance
over the past two decades. And after the fall of the USSR, its successor
state Russia has regained confidence in projecting its military power both
in its immediate neighbourhood and worldwide. This emerging multi-
polarity makes it harder to find compromises and agree on governance
responses to global challenges.
Intensifying trends of growing fragmentation further exacerbate these
difficulties. The increasing role of non-state actors, such as NGOs and
social movements, cities and other regional governments, multinational
companies and philanthropic foundations, has amounted to an accel-
erated proliferation of transnational partnerships, initiatives, platforms
and institutions with overlapping mandates, inefficient division of labour
and increased transaction costs. This kaleidoscope of constantly moving
patterns and the burgeoning growth of transnational multistakeholder
mechanisms continuously challenges the authority of intergovernmental
organisations and the UN system as a whole.
As a further complicating factor, traditional intergovernmental organ-
isations are increasingly out of touch with the new complexities of the
multipolar order in the early twenty-first century. The UN Security
Council is a case in point. Deemed as the central authority in main-
taining international peace and security, the membership of this UN body
reflects the power balance that emerged after the end of the Second
World War when permanent UN Security Council members like France
and Great Britain were still colonial powers. Today, however, the rule
of the permanent five (US, China, Russia, France and Great Britain)
with a permanent seat and more influence than non-permanent council
members is outdated and a fundamental reason for the failed attempts
over the last few decades to seriously reform the UN Security Council.
Based on the decades-long entrenchment of decision-making authority,
this institutional inertia reduces the flexibility of the principal interna-
tional organisations in global governance to develop effective response
strategies to global challenges in concert with other state and non-state
actors. Instead, these three interlocking factors (increasing multipolarity,
growing fragmentation and institutional inertia) amount to a gridlocked
system which hampers the negotiation of effective responses to global
challenges.
2.2.2 The Political Economy of Global Governance

As mentioned previously, the principal political and economic founda-
tions of the incremental evolution of the global governance architecture
were laid in nineteenth-century Europe. The first international mecha-
nisms and institutions were responsible for promoting international peace
and stability (the political foundation) and fostering industrial production
in the form of international trade, infrastructure development, indus-
trial standards and intellectual property (the economic foundation). The
promotion of all aspects related to industrial production was only possible
in an environment of relatively stable and peaceful international relations
among European powers, which had been achieved through the Congress
system (Murphy 1994, 49).
The first international organisations, the International Telegraph
Union (ITU) (today known as the International Telecommunication
Union) and the Universal Postal Union (UPU), are a case in point. These
first formalised international cooperation efforts reflected the emergence
of a vibrant international free trade movement across Europe, which in
line with the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo embraced liberal
economic policies and a belief that promoting international trade and
commerce and creating new markets in and beyond Europe would lead
to human progress and advancement (Hoekman and Kostecki 2001, 24;
Murphy 1994, 67).
These beliefs proved so strong that they outlasted both the collapse
of the Congress system and the breakdown of European civilisation in
the First World War. While many internationalisation attempts, including
the League of Nations, were washed away by the waves of nationalism
and protectionism, those international organisations that were initially
created to promote industrial production remained unscathed. Organisa-
tions like the ITU and UPU were supported by private lobby groups and
proved vital in providing the technological infrastructure to develop and
strengthen international markets in Europe and extend their reach beyond
the continent (Murphy 1994, 83–85). Thus, international organisations
primarily served to internationalise the various dynamics of the Industrial
Revolution by opening up new markets, fostering international commerce
and trade, building a global architecture through telegraphic cables, postal
services and railway and airline networks, as well as developing interna-
tional industrial standards and intellectual property rules (Murphy 1994,
109–117).
56 M. FRAUNDORFER
This context of steam-fuelled expansion propelled lots of European and

North American small-scale businesses to positions of global dominance,
allowing them to exercise a crucial role in shaping the central dynamics
and processes in global governance until this very day. As a case in point,
many of today’s dominant chocolate companies started as small grocery
or confectionery shops in the second half of the nineteenth century and
rose to global prominence in the twentieth century.
The famous Swiss chocolate company Lindt began as a small confec-
tionery shop in Zurich in 1845. The shop was set up by David Sprüngli
and his son Rudolf Sprüngli-Ammann to produce the first solid chocolate
bar in the German-speaking world, although the chocolate was still rather
hard and bitter. Thirty-four years later, the owner of another small confec-
tionery shop in Bern, Rodolphe Lindt, invented the conching process,
revolutionising chocolate production. Conching evenly distributes cocoa
butter with other chocolate ingredients and creates the smooth and
refined taste of chocolate which characterises chocolate bars to this
very day. In 1899, both companies merged and became Lindt-Sprüngli,
turning the company into one of the leading chocolate producers world-
wide (Lindt 2021).
Many other chocolate companies, such as Swiss-based Nestlé, UK-
based Cadbury or US-based Hershey, would follow similar trajectories,
taking advantage of the expansion of international trade routes and
markets, which made it easier to import ingredients like sugar and cocoa
from European colonies and then export the novel food products to other
countries and world regions (Leissle 2018). Other technological innova-
tions in the late nineteenth century, like refrigerated shipping, facilitated
the international trade of meat (see Chapter 5) and tropical fruits, such
as the banana, the most traded fruit commodity of all, along with the
emergence of powerful meat and fruit companies.
Concerns about protecting trade and commerce from interruptions
caused by infectious disease outbreaks led to the creation of the first
international health organisations, such as the Pan-American Sanitary
Organisation in Washington, DC, in 1903 and the Office International
d‘Hygiene Publique in Paris in 1907 (Murphy 1994, 135; see also
Chapter 4). As Murphy emphasises, international organisations “became
necessary to the further development of capitalist industrialism in late
nineteenth-century Europe simply because the market required by the
industries of the Second Industrial Revolution [late nineteenth and early
twentieth century] was larger than the domestic market of any single
industrial country except the United States, and in Europe an interna-

tional market of that size could not be created by private initiative alone”
(Murphy 1994, 135).
With the creation of the United Nations system after the Second World
War, the activities of international organisations would become ever more
widespread, focusing on development, public finance, peacekeeping and
democracy/human rights. But the promotion of industry, trade and
commerce through the expansion of markets, this time globally, would
remain the primary economic function of global governance organisations
(Murphy 1994, 188). Not least because leading decision-makers remem-
bered the negative consequences of the nationalist and protectionist
economic policies of the 1930s, including trade barriers, tariffs, import
quotas and competitive devaluation (Hoekman and Kostecki 2001, 25).
Thus, the US spearheaded the development of global trade liberalisation,
represented by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank
and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (Hoekman and
Kostecki 2001, 25; Murphy 1994, 197).
In Murphy’s words: “The GATT, the Bretton Woods organizations
[the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank], and the other
institutions of the UN system finally began doing what the League [of
Nations] never did. The ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organiza-
tion] and the expanded ITU [International Telecommunication Union]
helped link the physical infrastructure for the world market that came to
knit the wealthy OECD countries and the dependent capitalist states of
the Third World into a single world economy” (1994, 226). Linked to
these institutionalised multilateral efforts of trade liberalisation was the
idea that free trade would lead to a more stable and peaceful world order
(Hoekman and Kostecki 2001, 25).
This global and multilateral approach of trade liberalisation, aided
by international financial institutions with the authority to intervene in
countries’ domestic economic policies, became known as embedded liber-
alism (Ruggie 1982). Civil aviation, ocean shipping and automobiles
further accelerated the capitalist logic of global governance, opening up,
connecting and extending markets across countries and world regions in
unprecedented ways (Murphy 1994, 192–196).
The global recession in the early 1980s triggered the introduction
of neoclassical economics (also commonly called neoliberalism), which
further intensified many of these trends. These neoliberal policies included
58 M. FRAUNDORFER
the aggressive rollback of the state, excessive deregulation and privati-

sation and tax reductions. Spearheaded by Ronald Reagan in the US
and Margaret Thatcher in the UK and backed by international (finan-
cial) organisations, these policies were swiftly incorporated into the global
governance architecture, with dominant global governance institutions
spreading these policies across the world (Biersteker 1992).
The World Trade Organisation (WTO), established in 1995, built on
the logic of embedded liberalism and extended the GATT’s organisational
structure, ultimately institutionalising and universalising the multilateral
trade regime (Hoekman and Kostecki 2001, 51–52). After the end of
the Cold War, many formerly communist countries turned into capitalist
economies. China, which is governed by the Communist Party, joined
the WTO in 2001 (WTO, n.d.). And the Russian government joined the
organisation in 2012 after 18 years of negotiations (BBC 2011; WTO,
n.d.). Heavily contested by NGOs and global social movements, the
WTO has played a crucial role in institutionalising and entrenching free
trade principles. These trade rules have often benefitted a few powerful
countries and industries in Europe and North America and disadvantaged
vast populations in the developing world (Ruggie 1982).
Through the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, international trade
rules finally encroached on agriculture, formally institutionalising the capi-
talist (and neoliberal) logic of free trade on the international stage and
entrenching the dominant dynamics of large-scale industrialised agricul-
tural production (see Chapter 5). The TRIPS Agreement (Agreement
on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) formalised and
entrenched the international regulation of intellectual property rights
among WTO member states. In the debate on intellectual property rights
of life-saving medicines, for instance, the agreement favours powerful
governments and pharmaceutical companies at the expense of devel-
oping countries and their needs to produce affordable generic versions
of medicines. These injustices were thrown into sharp relief in the debate
on the production of generic versions of antiretrovirals to combat the
AIDS epidemic in the developing world in the 1990s and 2000s (Fraun-
dorfer 2015). And this conflict flared up again with renewed intensity
on the production of vaccines as global public goods during the global
COVID-19 pandemic.
As with telegraphic wires in the nineteenth century, the emergence
of the internet in the mid-1990s represented only the latest example
of how a novel telecommunication technology can drive a new stage
of institutionalisation of the global governance system. And as in the

past, the organisations that emerged to govern the internet are primarily
responsible for facilitating international trade and commerce and different
aspects of industrial production related to the internet’s networked
architecture.
The leading global internet governance organisation ICANN, created
in 1998, became responsible for the creation of a global market of domain
names, the protection of intellectual property and the functioning of
the global architecture of the internet (Chenou 2014, 213). In this
sense, ICANN’s functions mirror those of the first international organ-
isations set up more than a century earlier, particularly the ITU, with
the fundamental exception that as a private and transnational corporation
national governments are only present as observers in ICANN’s decision-
making structures (Chenou 2014, 217). As such, ICANN also stands in
a long tradition of global governance organisations primarily responsible
for creating and expanding markets and facilitating trade and commerce
across countries, regions and continents as the principal economic driver
of cross-border cooperation.
In sum, the gradual evolution of the global governance architecture
has been driven by economic beliefs of trade liberalisation, open borders
and the creation of ever more global markets. Since the 1980s this logic
has been compounded by waves of deregulation and privatisation in
many countries (commonly understood as neoliberalism), resulting in a
shrinking (welfare) state, the privatisation of public goods and increasing
inequality. Thus, international cooperation has often been particularly
effective in promoting intellectual property, trade, technology and indus-
trial standards. In the same vein, the creation and distribution of global
public goods, such as international peace and stability, the containment of
infectious diseases or the reduction of CO2 emissions, has served capitalist
interests of economic growth and trade liberalisation. Given this capi-
talist logic, the commodification of nature and the exploitation of large
parts of the Earth-system for economic gains is deeply written into global
governance’s DNA.
2.2.3 Entanglements Between Geological Time and World Time

Fossil fuels like coal and oil are compressed versions of time and space.
For example, “a single litre of petrol used today needed about twenty-
five metric tons of ancient marine life as precursor material, or that
60 M. FRAUNDORFER
organic matter equivalent to all of the plant and animal life produced
over the entire earth for four hundred years was required to produce the
fossil fuels we burn today in a single year” (Mitchell 2011, 15). As a
consequence, the massive burning of the planet’s past over the last two
centuries, compressed over hundreds of thousands of years in black rock
(coal) or liquid (oil), significantly reconfigured our understanding of space
and time.
The telephone, the locomotive and railways, the mass production of
cars, the mass commercialisation of air travel, the shipping industry or the
nuclear bomb—all these technological innovations in the nineteenth and
twentieth century changed our understanding of time and space beyond
recognition, which proved fundamental for international authority to
grow. Time and space began to shrink, reducing the travel time on inter-
continental trips from months (or days) to hours, weaving communities,
countries and continents together through telegraphic wires, fibre-optic
cables and ever more integrated international trade. In short, the release
of tonnes of compressed time and space into the atmosphere implicated
an ever-tighter compression of time and space in the international system,
generally known as globalisation.
Our civilisation in the twenty-first century relies on more integrated
planetary connections than ever before, scaling up and exacerbating the
environmental challenges that come with these planetary connections
(Scholte 2005, 60). Whereas in the past, environmental challenges were
limited in reach, today their consequences are as global and planetary as
our actions on the planet. Given the global and planetary nature of today’s
challenges, they affect our societies both instantaneously and simulta-
neously (Scholte 2005, 62). Like infectious disease outbreaks and the
manifold local manifestations of climate change, these challenges affect
us within no time in several world cities, countries and world regions
at the same time. This shrinking of time and space in the unfolding of
global challenges and their impact on human societies and the entire
Earth-system represents a fundamental dilemma for global governance.
Timothy Morton’s characterisation of these global challenges as hyper-
objects, “entities that are massively distributed in time and space […]
[so that] humans can think and compute them, but not perceive them
directly” (Morton 2014, 489), poignantly captures this dilemma. We can
make hyperobjects like climate change visible through satellite images,
graphs and other computer models that show the concentration of CO2
in the atmosphere, rising temperatures, sea levels or melting glaciers. But
the phenomenon developed gradually over several decades and centuries

(massive distribution in time), affecting the entire planet (massive distri-
bution in space) so that it is difficult to perceive it directly in all its
complexity and impact.
We cannot see climate change in all its temporal and spatial entirety. It
has gradually unfolded over two centuries and affects all human societies
globally in different ways. The frequent droughts and floods experienced
by many societies nowadays are just that: droughts and floods. They are a
consequence of human-induced climate change, a local manifestation of
the hyperobject climate change. But they are not the hyperobject climate
change. This means that many hyperobjects are only indirectly visible to
humans, mostly through their local manifestations.
Morton neatly summarised this globalising and planetary development
that gradually engulfed millions and billions of people worldwide through
the interconnected use of machines that had their origin in the Industrial
Revolution.
The very tools we use to see the Anthropocene are related to the tools
that got us into it. For there is a somewhat straight line between the
kind of machine a steam engine is—a general purpose one that one can
plug in to all kinds of things, creating gigantic systems of machines and
factories housing machines—and the kind of thing a computer is. […] A
steam engine is a multipurpose device. So is a computer. A computer can
pretend to be a calculator, a diary, a piece of paper, a telephone, or another
computer, or a machine that can assemble or direct other machines.
[…] [This explains] how millions of shovels full of coal chucked into
steam engines and millions of turnings of ignition keys sum up to global
warming. Unconsciously—even if I know I am doing it, in other words—I
am contributing to global warming, yet my individual contribution is a
statistically meaningless blip. (Morton 2014, 490–493)
Geological time and world time have become intrinsically entangled in

the Anthropocene. Our individual actions sum up to a global and plan-
etary impact causing challenges and threats to our modern civilisation
that ignore human-made borders. In this context, sociologist Zygmunt
Bauman held that “the idea of a geophysical border is increasingly diffi-
cult to sustain in the ‘real world’” (Bauman 1998, 12). But while today’s
global challenges are essentially borderless, we do not live in a borderless
world (Scholte 2005, 75). And global governance is not borderless, either.
Global governance is a historically grown and human-made construct
62 M. FRAUNDORFER
shaped by different political, economic and social forces, power struggles

and ideologies that unfolded over the past two hundred years.
And here, global governance is facing an existential dilemma: all too
often, we try to confront global challenges with hopelessly outdated tools
or instruments that are limited in reach and abide by entirely different
notions of space and time. Or in Zygmunt Bauman’s words, “our prob-
lems are globally produced, whereas the instruments of political action
bequeathed by builders of nation states were reduced to the scale of
services territorial nation-states required” (Bauman and Bordoni 2014,
21–22).
This entanglement of geological time (or deep time) and world time
(or historical time) also has far-reaching consequences for the future of
the planet and its species, including humans (see Box 2.6). Today’s global
challenges will inevitably become the challenges of future generations.
The consequences of climate change will permanently alter the Earth-
system for hundreds of thousands of years to come. The deposition of
nuclear waste, for instance, will continue to pose a major threat to human
civilisations in thousands of years (Hanusch and Biermann 2020, 19).
And human-induced CO2 emissions have been so massive since the end
of the Second World War that humans have already changed the planet’s
natural climate cycles for thousands of years to come (Summerhayes and
Zalasiewicz 2018, 199).
Box 2.6: Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects

“I start the engine of my car. Liquefied dinosaur bones burst into flame.
I walk up a chalky hill. Billions of ancient pulverized undersea creatures
grip my shoes. I breathe. Bacterial pollution from some Archean cataclysm
fills my alveoli—we call it oxygen. I type this sentence. Mitochondria,
anaerobic bacteria hiding in my cells from the Oxygen Catastrophe, spur
me with energy. They have their own DNA. I hammer a nail. In consis-
tent layers of ore, bacteria deposited the iron in Earth’s crust. I turn
on the TV and see snow. A sliver of the snow is a trace of the Cosmic
Microwave Background left over from the Big Bang. I walk on top of life-
forms. The oxygen in our lungs is bacterial outgassing. Oil is the result of
some dark, secret collusion between rocks and algae and plankton millions
and millions of years in the past. When you look at oil you’re looking at
the past. Hyperobjects are time-stretched to such a vast extent that they
become almost impossible to hold in mind.”
Source Morton (2013, 58).
And not only have global governance actors and organisations severe
difficulties dealing with these global challenges in the present. No organ-
isations exist to deal with these problems in the future, what Hanusch
and Biermann call “a lack of an institutionalised deep-time perspective”,
meaning “that hardly any societal and political organisations temporally
correspond to the deep-time interdependencies in the Anthropocene”
(Hanusch and Biermann 2020, 20).
Deep-time organisations that take into account the entanglements of
geological-time and world time are only very slowly emerging at the
margins of global governance: the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway,
the San Diego Frozen Zoo, the EAZA biobank and the first permanent
nuclear waste deposit in Olkiluoto, Finland (still under construction), are
among those institutions that incorporate a deep-time perspective and
recognise the entanglements between geological time (deep time) and
world time (historical time) (EAZA 2021; Hanusch and Biermann 2020;
Ialenti 2020; San Diego Zoo 2020).
Crop genebanks for the storage of seeds are nothing unusual. Approx-
imately 1700 of them exist in countries across the world (Asdal and
Guarino 2018, 391). But most of them are under national direction or
located in an unsafe environment. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is the
only transnational and global seed vault, storing duplicates of seed samples
as backups from across the world to safeguard the planet’s biodiversity
and crop diversity. In a sense, the vault safely stores the history of human
agriculture of the last 12,000 years. Opened in 2008 in the Norwe-
gian archipelago of Svalbard and located in one of the most remote and
geologically stable places of the planet (between mainland Norway and
the North Pole), well above sea level and covered by permafrost, the Sval-
bard Global Seed Vault can safely store seeds for hundreds of years. With
a capacity to store 4.5 million different crops, slightly more than 1 million
samples are currently stored in the vault. Established and fully funded by
the government of Norway and the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an inter-
national non-profit organisation based in Bonn, Germany, the Seed Vault
is operated by the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (Norwegian Ministry
of Agriculture and Food, n.d.; The Crop Trust, n.d.-a). While the Norwe-
gian government owns the vault, the seeds in the vault are the property
of the depositing institution (Asdal and Guarino 2018, 391) (Image 2.1).
In the midst of the planet’s sixth mass extinction of species, caused by
humanity’s planetary environmental impact, calls for a global approach
to the long-time storage of the gene material of endangered species to
64 M. FRAUNDORFER
Image 2.1 The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (Source The Crop Trust, n.d.-b)
protect Earth’s biodiversity for future generations are growing louder.

So far, however, formal international cooperation mechanisms to store
genetic material of non-human animals from across the planet in biobanks
(or genetic cryobanks) are lacking.
For decades, biobanks have been hosted by natural history museums,
charities, universities, research labs and zoos (Breithoff and Harrison
2020; Comizzoli and Wildt 2017; Radin 2015). For instance, San Diego
Zoo Global’s Frozen Zoo, in operation since the mid-1970s, is the largest
genetic cryobank in the world storing more than 10,000 individual cell
lines from more than 1100 species (San Diego Zoo 2020). In 2020, the
World Conservation Congress of the International Union for Conserva-
tion of Nature (IUCN) called on IUCN members “to enable and support
establishment of a global network of biobanks dedicated to the achieve-
ment of global species conservation targets and operating to common
standards of good practice and information sharing” (IUCN 2020). A
case in point is the transnational biobank of the European Association
of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA biobank). The EAZA biobank relies on four
regional biobanking hubs with storing facilities located at the Institute for
Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin and the zoos of Antwerp, Edinburgh
and Copenhagen. These hubs can store genetic samples from the over
400 EAZA member institutions in Europe and the Middle East (EAZA
2021).
On the Finish island of Olkiluoto, construction work is currently
underway to build Onkalo, the world’s first permanent nuclear waste
repository to store radioactive waste for 100,000 years, approximately
450 m underground in tunnels that extend up to 70 km in an area of
2km2 . The storage of nuclear waste begins in the 2020s and receives the
nuclear waste of Finland’s nuclear power plants for the next hundred years
until it will be sealed up for eternity (Madsen 2010; Posiva, n.d.). Like
the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Onkalo takes into account the entangle-
ments between geological time and world time. The major difference is
that Onkalo is not a global project. Its repository is only destined for the
nuclear waste produced by Finish nuclear power plants.
2.3 Summary
2.3.1 The Anthropocene
The debate about the meaning(s) of the Anthropocene is far from settled.
First, there is considerable disagreement over the exact starting date of the
Anthropocene. And second, scientists diverge on the determining factors
that ultimately caused the global environmental challenges of our age,
be it the role of humanity and its drive for expansion, the role of capi-
talist structures or the role of technology. The Anthropocene is one of
the very few concepts that has gained considerable traction in different
disciplines in the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities.
The concept seeks to shed light on exceptional geological, Earth-system
and civilisational developments that scientists across disciplinary divides
are struggling to come to terms with.
In geological terms, different interpretations have been put forward
as to the geological starting point of the Anthropocene. From an
Earth-system perspective, interpretations of the Anthropocene tend to
universalise humanity as a geological force, suggesting that humanity’s
actions have inevitably led to the global climate crisis. As a consequence,
Earth-system scientists often propose technocratic and technology-based
solutions, such as geoengineering, to tackle the climate crisis. When
66 M. FRAUNDORFER
looking into the role of human civilisation more carefully, social scien-
tists have largely been dissatisfied with Earth-system perspectives, which
gloss over too many nuances as to particular socio-economic and political
drivers of the global climate crisis. Thus, many social scientists stress the
impact of capitalist structures and the role some human societies, classes
and groups in Europe and North America have played in bringing about
the global climate crisis.
A social scientist-inspired view puts a spotlight on capitalism as the
dominant economic ideology responsible for accelerating environmental
degradation on a global scale through socio-economic relationships of
power and dominance. The proposed term of the Capitalocene dissects
the monolithic construct of humanity and sheds light on those human
societies in Europe and North America that have exorbitantly benefitted
from unfolding capitalist structures—and thus put in place those socio-
economic and political relationships of power and dominance that have
driven environmental degradation across the planet. While some scholars
put emphasis on the development of capitalist structures since the Indus-
trial Revolution in the nineteenth century, other scholars go further
back in time settling on the European colonisation of the Americas from
the fifteenth century onwards, which created a (capitalist) world system
connecting for the first time all world continents through highly unequal
capitalist structures and prepared the socio-economic and political back-
drop against which the Industrial Revolution unfolded. Advocates of the
term Technocene shed light on the role of technology and technolog-
ical innovation, such as the transformative potential of the combustion
engine, telegraphic wires, turbines, aeroplanes and so forth, over the past
two hundred years as the primary drivers of the planetary transformations
of the Anthropocene.
Amidst various disagreements and different emphases on the causal
factors of the global climate crisis, there is growing consensus among
scientists that developments over the past two hundred years, and partic-
ularly since the end of the Second World War, also called the Great Accel-
eration, have played a significant role in the emergence and acceleration
of today’s global environmental challenges.
2.3.2 International and Transnational Authority

The gradual evolution of global governance dynamics over the past two
hundred years is intrinsically interwoven with the gradual emergence
of global and planetary challenges resulting from an ever more glob-
alised, interdependent, energy-intensive and highly unequal civilisation.
The Congress of Vienna in 1814/15 represented the first attempt of a
group of states to collaborate through an international forum and create
some form of international peace and stability on the continent as a Euro-
pean public good. Throughout the nineteenth century, technological
innovations like telegraphic wires connecting countries and continents,
the transboundary spread of infectious diseases, intensifying international
trade and the growing aviation industry put new pressures on European
states to cooperate internationally and jointly confront novel cross-border
challenges through the creation of international institutions. These inter-
connected developments gave rise to ever more frequent formalised
expressions of authority beyond the nation state vested in international
organisations and bodies (international authority).
After the Second World War, the Great Acceleration of human devel-
opment led to an unprecedented proliferation and deepening of interna-
tional authority, most importantly represented by the UN system. After
the end of the Cold War, the proliferation of various types of international
authority was complemented by the emergence of types of transnational
authority through the newly gained influence of multistakeholder organ-
isations, transnational city networks, global networks of NGOs and social
movements and the global activities of multinational companies and phil-
anthropic foundations. Not only did the Great Acceleration accelerate
the formation of a globalised human civilisation with an ever more
complex global governance architecture infused with different types of
international and transnational authority. The Great Acceleration has also
exacerbated global and planetary challenges to the degree that they are
now threatening the stability of our modern societies and putting major
strains on an ever more fragmented, overcrowded and gridlocked global
governance architecture.
68 M. FRAUNDORFER
2.3.3 The Political Economy of Global Governance

The emergence of international cooperation efforts and the rise of
different types of international and transnational authority since the
nineteenth century has been intrinsically tied to capitalist ideologies of
growth and expansion through trade liberalisation, free trade, industrial
production and open markets. International and transnational efforts to
guarantee international peace and stability, promote democracy, shape an
international human rights regime, contain infectious diseases and, since
the late twentieth century, reduce CO2 emissions have been at the service
of these economic ideologies and capitalist structures. Hence, ecosystems,
natural resources and the Earth-system have always featured in global
governance as objects (or commodities) to be used and exploited for
the sake of economic growth, industrial production, free trade and the
globalisation of capitalist markets.
2.3.4 Geological Time and World Time

The concept of the Anthropocene implicates complex entanglements
between geological time (or deep time) and world time (or historical
time). Reaching far into the future and extending across the planet,
today’s global and planetary challenges render the sticky and powerful
state-centric logic along with its various expressions of international
authority highly problematic. In the absence of an overarching global
authority, a global (or world) government that could unfold the power to
create a truly global response to these challenges, global problem-solving
efforts are fragmented, piecemeal and disjointed, giving rise to ineffective,
weak and inadequate responses to these challenges. As a consequence,
the global governance architecture is overwhelmed by the hyperobjects
of global and planetary challenges, which are so “massively distributed
in time and space” that world time becomes intrinsically entangled with
geological time.
As global governance actors have been exclusively formed by the
parameters of world time over the past two hundred years, their mandates
largely ignore these entanglements. In order to keep up with the chal-
lenges of today’s hyperobjects, global governance will need to incorporate
deep-time considerations. As the examples of the Svalbard Global Seed
Vault, permanent nuclear waste repositories and biobanks illustrate, this
is currently happening in some isolated cases. And yet, it will still be a
very long way before global governance reflects the entanglements of

world time and deep time in their dominant institutional architectures,
providing governance solutions not only for the immediate present but
also for coming centuries and possibly millennia.
Questions
• Discuss the role of capitalist structures in the emergence of the

Anthropocene! How has the economic mindset underlying interna-
tional cooperation (and ultimately global governance) exacerbated
the global climate crisis?
• What were the principal drivers behind the gradual emergence of
international and transnational authority? Which role did Europe
play in the birth of various types of international and transnational
authority?
• What are the consequences of the entanglements between geological
time and world time for global governance?
• Which role has technology played in the emergence of global gover-
nance—and the acceleration of global climate change in the second
half of the twentieth century?
• Even if the creation of a world government is unfeasible for the fore-
seeable future, do you think a hypothetical world government would
be better equipped to tackle the challenges of the Anthropocene?
References
Acuto, M. 2013. The New Climate Leaders? Review of International Studies 39:
835–857.
Altvater, E. 2016. The Capitalocene, or, Geoengineering Against Capitalism’s
Planetary Boundaries. In Anthropocene or Capitalocene: Nature, History, and
the Crisis of Capitalism, ed. J.W. Moore. Oakland: PM Press.
Asdal, Å., and L. Guarino. 2018. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault: 10 Years—1
Million Samples. Biopreservation and Biobanking 16: 391–392.
Bäckstrand, K. 2006. Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships for Sustainable Develop-
ment: Rethinking Legitimacy, Accountability and Effectiveness. European
Environment 16: 290–306.
Baskin, J. 2015. Paradigm Dressed as Epoch: The Ideology of the Anthropocene.
Environmental Values 24: 9–29.
70 M. FRAUNDORFER
Bauman, Z. 1998. Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Polity

Press.
Bauman, Z., and C. Bordoni. 2014. State of Crisis. Cambridge: Polity Press.
BBC. 2011. Russia Becomes WTO Member After 18 Years of Talks, December
16 [Online]. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-162
12643. Accessed 6 Apr 2021.
Biersteker, T.J. 1992. The “Triumph” of Neoclassical Economics in the Devel-
oping World: Policy Convergence and Bases of Governance in the Inter-
national Economic Order. In Governance Without Government: Order and
Change in World Politics, ed. J.N. Rosenau and E.-O. Czempiel, 102–131.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Birn, A.E. 2014. Philanthrocapitalism, Past and Present: The Rockefeller Foun-
dation, the Gates Foundation, and the Setting(s) of the International/Global
Health Agenda. Hypothesis 12: 1–27.
Boettcher, M., and S. Schäfer. 2017. Reflecting Upon 10 Years of Geoengi-
neering Research: Introduction to the Crutzen + 10 Special Issue. Earth’s
Future 5: 266–277.
Bonneuil, C. 2015. The Geological Turn: Narratives of the Anthropocene. In
The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Modernity
in a New Epoch, ed. C. Hamilton, C. Bonneuil, and F. Gemenne. Abingdon:
Routledge.
Bonneuil, C., and J.B. Fressoz. 2016. The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth,
History, and Us. Brooklyn, NY: Verso.
Brandon, J.A., W. Jones, and M.D. Ohman. 2019. Multidecadal Increase in
Plastic Particles in Coastal Ocean Sediments. Science Advances 5 (9): 1–6.
Breithoff, E., and R. Harrison. 2020. From Ark to Bank: Extinction, Proxies
and Biocapitals in Ex-situ Biodiversity Conservation Practices. International
Journal of Heritage Studies 26 (1): 37–55.
Bucheli, M. 2005. Bananas and Business: The United Fruit Company in
Colombia, 1899–2000. New York: New York University Press.
Cameron, M.A. 1999. Global Civil Society and the Ottawa Process: Lessons
from the Movement to Ban Anti-personnel Mines. Canadian Foreign Policy
Journal 7: 85–102.
Carson, J.T. 2019. Algae and Oxygen, Humans and Carbon: A Precambrian
Analogue for the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene Review 6 (1–2): 162–166.
Castán Broto, V., and H. Bulkeley. 2013. A Survey of Urban Climate Change
Experiments in 100 Cities. Global Environmental Change 23: 92–102.
Chenou, J.M. 2014. From Cyber-Libertarianism to Neoliberalism: Internet
Exceptionalism, Multi-stakeholderism, and the Institutionalisation of Internet
Governance in the 1990s. Globalizations 11 (2): 205–223.
Comizzoli, P., and D.E. Wildt. 2017. Cryobanking Biomaterials from Wild
Animal Species to Conserve Genes and Biodiversity: Relevance to Human
Biobanking and Biomedical Research. In Biobanking of Human Biospecimens,

ed. P. Hainaut, J. Vaught, K. Zatloukal, and M. Pasterk, 217–235. Cham:
Springer.
Corry, O., D. McLaren, and N. Kornbech. 2020. Geoengineering Won’t Unlock
the Politics of Climate Change. openDemocracy—Free Thinking for the World
[Online]. Available from: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-
make-it/geoengineering-wont-unlock-the-politics-of-climate-change/?fbclid=
IwAR2hwrU1wLTjCzXxYjkxa3BIeg3KRdKM9MBB4O3zw4w0hKj_9aMo
RwMUxo4. Accessed 23 July 2020.
Crutzen, P.J. 2002. Geology of Mankind. Nature 415: 23.
Crutzen, P.J. 2006. Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A
Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma? Climatic Change 77: 211.
Cunneen, M. 2005. Anti-slavery International. Journal of Global Ethics 1: 85–92.
Curtis, S. 2016. Global Cities and Global Order. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Dalrymple, W. 2019. The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company.
London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Davies, J. 2016. The Birth of the Anthropocene. Oakland, CA: University of
California Press.
Dosal, P.J. 1993. Doing Business with the Dictators: A Political History of United
Fruit in Guatemala, 1899–1944. Lanham: SR Books.
EASAC. 2018. Negative Emission Technologies: What Role in Meeting
Paris Agreement Targets? EASAC Policy Report, 35 [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/28_EASAC%20R
eport%20on%20Negative%20Emission%20Technologies.pdf. Accessed 2 June
2021.
EAZA. 2021. EAZA Biobank [Online]. Available from: https://www.eaza.net/
conservation/research/eaza-biobank/. Accessed 5 Mar 2021.
Elhacham, E., L. Ben-Uri, J. Grozovski, Y.M. Bar-On, and R. Milo. 2020. Global
Human-Made Mass Exceeds All Living Biomass. Nature 588: 442–444.
Florida, R. 2019. The Real Powerhouses That Drive the World’s Economy.
Bloomberg City Lab, February 28 [Online]. Available from: https://www.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-28/mapping-the-mega-regions-pow
ering-the-world-s-economy. Accessed 14 July 2020.
Forsythe, D.P., and B.A. Rieffer-Flanagan. 2016. The International Committee of
the Red Cross: A Neutral Humanitarian Actor. Abingdon: Routledge.
Fraundorfer, M. 2015. Brazil’s Emerging Role in Global Governance: Health,
Food Security and Bioenergy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fraundorfer, M. 2017. The Role of Cities in Shaping Transnational Law in
Climate Governance. Global Policy 8: 23–31.
Fraundorfer, M. 2018. Rethinking Global Democracy in Brazil. London:
Rowman & Littlefield International.
72 M. FRAUNDORFER
Galaz, V. 2014. Global Environmental Governance, Technology and Politics: The

Anthropocene Gap. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Glasius, M. 2008. Does the Involvement of Global Civil Society Make Inter-
national Decision-Making More Democratic? The Case of the International
Criminal Court. Journal of Civil Society 4: 43–60.
Glikson, A. 2013. Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep-Time Blueprints of the
Anthropocene. Anthropocene 3: 89–92.
Glikson, A. 2018. THE METHANE TIME BOMB. Energy Procedia 146: 23–
29.
Goose, S.D. 1998. The Ottawa Process and the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. Yearbook
of International Humanitarian Law 1: 269–291.
Hale, T., D. Held, and G.W. Brown. 2017. Beyond Gridlock. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Hale, T., D. Held, and K. Young. 2013. Gridlock: Why Global Cooperation Is
Failing When We Need It Most. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hamilton, C., C. Bonneuil, and F. Gemenne. 2015. Thinking the Anthropocene.
In The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Moder-
nity in a New Epoch, ed. C. Hamilton, C. Bonneuil, and F. Gemenne, 1–13.
Hanusch, F., and F. Biermann. 2020. Deep-Time Organizations: Learning
Institutional Longevity from History. The Anthropocene Review 7: 19–41.
Harman, S. 2016. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Legitimacy in
Global Health Governance. Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism
and International Organizations 22: 349–368.
Hobden, S. 2018. Post-Humanism and Geoengineering. In Traditions and
Trends in Global Environmental Politics: International Relations and the
Earth, ed. O. Corry and H. Stevenson, 100–119. Routledge: Abingdon.
Hoegh-Guldberg, O., P.J. Mumby, A.J. Hooten, R.S. Steneck, P. Greenfield, E.
Gomez, C.D. Harvell, P.F. Sale, A.J. Edwards, K. Caldeira, N. Knowlton,
C.M. Eakin, R. Iglesias-Prieto, N. Muthiga, R.H. Bradbury, A. Dubi, and
M.E. Hatziolos. 2007. Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean
Acidification. Science 318: 1737–1742.
Hoekman, B., and M. Kostecki. 2001. The Political Economy of the World Trading
System the WTO and Beyond, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hughes, D.J. 2009. An Environmental History of the World: Humankind’s
Changing Role in the Community of Life, 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge.
Ialenti, V. 2020. Deep Time Reckoning. How Future Thinking Can Help Earth
Now. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
ITU. 2019a. The 1865 International Telegraph Conference [Online]. Available
from: https://www.itu.int/en/history/Pages/ITUBorn1865.aspx. Accessed
13 July 2020.
ITU. 2019b. Overview of ITU’s History [Online]. Available from: https://www.

itu.int/en/history/Pages/ITUsHistory.aspx. Accessed 14 July 2020.
IUCN. 2020. 094—Linking in situ and ex situ Efforts to Save Threatened
Species, September 1 [Online]. Available from: https://www.iucncongress
2020.org/motion/094. Accessed 5 Mar 2021.
Kleinwachter, W. 2003. ICANN Governance: From Self-Governance to Public-
Private Partnership: The Changing Role of Governments in the Management
of the Internet’s Core Resources. Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 36: 1103–
1753.
Leissle, K. 2018. Cocoa. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lenton, T. 2013. Tipping Elements from a Global Perspective. In Addressing
Tipping Points for a Precarious Future, ed. T. O’Riordan and T. Lenton, 23–
46. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lenton, T.M., H. Held, E. Kriegler, J.W. Hall, W. Lucht, S. Rahmstorf, and
H.J. Schellnhuber. 2008. Tipping Elements in the Earth’s Climate System.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
105: 1786–1793.
Lenton, T.M., J. Rockström, O. Gaffney, S. Rahmstorf, K. Richardson, W.
Steffen, and H.J. Schellnhuber. 2019. Climate Tipping Points—Too Risky
to Bet Against. Nature 575: 592–595.
Lindt. 2021. The Lindt History [Online]. Available from: https://www.lindt.co.
uk/history. Accessed 6 Apr 2021.
Lewis, S.L., and M.A. Maslin. 2015. Defining the Anthropocene. Nature 519:
171–180.
Macdonald, T. 2008. Global Stakeholder Democracy: Power and Representation
Beyond Liberal States. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Madsen, M. 2010. Into Eternity. Denmark: Films Transit International.
Malm, A. 2012. China as Chimney of the World: The Fossil Capital Hypothesis.
Organization & Environment 25 (2): 146–177.
Malm, A. 2016. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global
Warming. London: Verso.
Malm, A., and A. Hornborg. 2014. The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the
Anthropocene Narrative. The Anthropocene Review 1 (1): 62–69.
Martins, H. 2018. The Technocene: Reflections on Bodies, Minds, and Markets.
London: Anthem Press.
McCarthy, M. 2002. A Brief History of the World Health Organization. The
Lancet 360: 1111–1112.
M’Gonigle, R.M., and M.W. Zacher. 1979. Pollution, Politics, and International
Law: Tankers at Sea. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Microsoft. 2020. Microsoft Appoints Senior Government Affairs Leaders in
Brussels and New York, Establishes New York Office to Work with the
United Nations, January 17 [Online]. Available from: https://blogs.mic
74 M. FRAUNDORFER
rosoft.com/eupolicy/2020/01/17/senior-gov-affairs-leaders-appointed-bru
ssels-new-york/. Accessed 14 July 2020.
Mitchell, T. 2011. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. London:
Verso.
Mitzen, J. 2013. Power in Concert: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Global
Governance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Moore, J.W. 2016. Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the
Crisis of Capitalism. In Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and
the Crisis of Capitalism, ed. J.W. Moore, 1–11. Oakland: PM Press.
Moore, J.W. 2017. The Capitalocene, Part I: On the Nature and Origins of Our
Ecological Crisis. The Journal of Peasant Studies 44 (3): 594–630.
Morton, T. 2014. Victorian Hyperobjects. Nineteenth-Century Contexts 36:
489–500.
Mueller, M., and M. Chango. 2008. Disrupting Global Governance: The
Internet Whois Service, ICANN, and Privacy. Journal of Information Tech-
nology & Politics 5: 303–325.
Murphy, C.N. 1994. International Organization and Industrial Change: Global
Governance Since 1850. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Murphy, C.N. 2015. The Last Two Centuries of Global Governance. Global
Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations 21:
189–196.
Nature. 2018. “Negative Thinking”. 554, 404.
Nobelprize. org. 2021. Paul J. Crutzen. Facts [Online]. Available from: https://
www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1995/crutzen/facts/. Accessed 30
Apr 2021.
Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food. n.d. “Svalbard Global Seed Vault”
[Online]. Available from: https://www.seedvault.no/. Accessed 13 July 2020.
Oxford University Press. 2021. Anthropocene, n. and adj [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/398463?redirectedFrom=ant
hropocene. Accessed 4 May 2021.
Parenti, C. 2016. Environment-Making in the Capitalocene: Political Ecology of
the State. In Anthropocene or Capitalocen: Nature, History, and the Crisis of
Capitalism, ed. J.W. Moore, 166–184. Oakland: PM Press.
Pearce, F. 2019. More Scientists Now Think Geoengineering May Be Essen-
tial. Wired, November 6 [Online]. Available from: https://www.wired.com/
story/more-scientists-now-think-geoengineering-may-be-essential/. Accessed
2 June 2021.
Posiva. n.d. Final Disposal [Online]. Available https://www.posiva.fi/en/index/
finaldisposal.html. Accessed 13 July 2020.
Radin, J. 2015. Planned Hindsight. Journal of Cultural Economy 8 (3): 361–378.
Redd, N.T. 2019. What Spacecraft Will Enter Interstellar Space Next? Space.com,
January 30 [Online]. Available from: https://www.space.com/43158-what-
spacecraft-will-enter-interstellar-space-next.html. Accessed 2 Mar 2021.
Ritchie, H., and M. Roser. 2017. CO2 and Other Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
Our World in Data [Online]. Available from: https://ourworldindata.
org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions#the-long-run-history-cumulativ
e-co2. Accessed 1 May 2019.
Ruff, T. 2018. Negotiating the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear
Weapons and the Role of ICAN. Global Change, Peace & Security 30:
233–241.
Ruggie, J.G. 1982. International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded
Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order. International Organization 36
(2): 379–415.
San Diego Zoo. 2020. San Diego Zoo Global’s Frozen Zoo® Hits Milestone:
10,000 Cell Lines: Second-largest Number of New Species in a Single Year
Added in 2019, February 12 [Online]. Available from: https://zoo.sandie
gozoo.org/pressroom/news-releases/san-diego-zoo-globals-frozen-zoor-hits-
milestone-10000-cell-lines. Accessed 5 Mar 2021.
Sassen, S. 2001. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. London: Princeton
University Press.
Scholte, J.A. 2005. Globalization: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Smil, V. 2019. Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Steffen, W., P.J. Crutzen, and J.R. McNeill. 2007. The Anthropocene: Are
Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature. Ambio 36:
614–621.
Stephens, L., D. Fuller, N. Boivin, T. Rick, N. Gauthier, A. Kay, B. Marwick,
C.G. Armstrong, C.M. Barton, T. Denham, K. Douglass, J. Driver, L. Janz, P.
Roberts, J.D. Rogers, H. Thakar, M. Altaweel, A.L. Johnson, M.M. Sampi-
etro Vattuone, M. Aldenderfer, S. Archila, G. Artioli, M.T. Bale, T. Beach,
F. Borrell, T. Braje, P.I. Buckland, N.G. Jiménez Cano, J.M. Capriles, A.
Diez Castillo, Ç. Çilingiroĝlu, M. Negus Cleary, J. Conolly, P.R. Coutros,
R.A. Covey, M. Cremaschi, A. Crowther, L. Der, S. Di Lernia, J.F. Doer-
shuk, W.E. Doolittle, K.J. Edwards, J.M. Erlandson, D. Evans, A. Fairbairn,
P. Faulkner, G. Feinman, R. Fernandes, S.M. Fitzpatrick, R. Fyfe, E. Garcea,
S. Goldstein, R.C. Goodman, J. Dalpoim Guedes, J. Herrmann, P. Hiscock,
P. Hommel, K.A. Horsburgh, C. Hritz, J.W. Ives, A. Junno, J.G. Kahn,
B. Kaufman, C. Kearns, T.R. Kidder, F. Lanoë, D. Lawrence, G.-A. Lee,
M.J. Levin, H.B. Lindskoug, J.A. López-Sáez, S. Macrae, R. Marchant, J.M.
Marston, S. McClure, M.D. McCoy, A.V. Miller, M. Morrison, G. Motuzaite
Matuzeviciute, J. Müller, A. Nayak, S. Noerwidi, T.M. Peres, C.E. Peterson,
76 M. FRAUNDORFER
L. Proctor, A.R. Randall, S. Renette, G. Robbins Schug, K. Ryzewski, R.

Saini, V. Scheinsohn, P. Schmidt, P. Sebillaud, O. Seitsonen, I.A. Simpson,
A. Sołtysiak, R.J. Speakman, R.N. Spengler, M.L. Steffen, M.J. Storozum,
K.M. Strickland, J. Thompson, T.L. Thurston, S. Ulm, M. Cemre Ustunkaya,
M.H. Welker, C. West, P.R. Williams, D.K. Wright, N. Wright, M. Zahir,
A. Zerboni, E. Beaudoin, S. Munevar Garcia, J. Powell, A. Thornton, J.O.
Kaplan, M.-J. Gaillard, K.K. Goldewijk, and E. Ellis. 2019. Archaeological
Assessment Reveals Earth’s Early Transformation Through Land Use. Science
(American Association for the Advancement of Science) 356: 897–902.
Striffler, S., and M. Moberg (eds.). 2003. Banana Wars: Power, Production, and
History in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press.
Summerhayes, C.P., and J. Zalasiewicz. 2018. Global Warming and the Anthro-
pocene. Geology Today 34: 194–200.
The Crop Trust. n.d.-a. Svalbard Global Seed Vault [Online]. Available from:
https://www.croptrust.org/our-work/svalbard-global-seed-vault/. Accessed
13 July 2020.
The Crop Trust. n.d.-b. Media Center [Online]. Available from: https://www.
croptrust.org/media-center/#mc-photos-videos. Accessed 5 Mar 2021.
UN. 2018. 68% of the World Population Projected to Live in Urban Areas
by 2050, Says UN [Online]. Available from: https://www.un.org/develo
pment/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-pro
spects.html. Accessed 13 Feb 2020.
UNESCO. 2020. Ancient City of Damascus [Online]. Available from: https://
whc.unesco.org/en/list/20/. Accessed 14 July 2020.
Weiss, T.G. 2013. Global Governance: What? Why? Whither? Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Williams, M. 2003. Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis.
Chicago and London: Chicago University Press.
WTO. n.d. Members and Observers [Online]. Available from: https://www.wto.
org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org6_e.htm. Accessed 6 Apr 2021.
Yeo, S. 2016. Anthropocene. History of an Idea [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://www.carbonbrief.org/anthropocene-journey-to-new-geo
logical-epoch. Accessed 5 May 2021.
Youde, J. 2013. The Rockefeller and Gates Foundations in Global Health
Governance. Global Society 27 (2): 139–185.
Zacher, M.W., and B.A. Sutton. 1996. Governing Global Networks: International
Regimes for Transportation and Communications. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Zürn, M. 2018. A Theory of Global Governance: Authority, Legitimacy, and
Contestation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
CHAPTER 3
Conceptual Toolbox
3.1 Authority in Global Governance

3.1.1 Einstein’s Conundrum
The famous theoretical physicist Albert Einstein spent the summer of
1932 in his beloved country house in the little town of Caputh not far
from Berlin where he frequently received some of the leading intellectuals,
thinkers, scientists, philosophers, artists and writers of his time. With a
picturesque view of Lake Templin, Einstein also spent his time writing
letters to friends and contemporaries, exchanging views about politics,
art, religion, the universe and, of course, physics (Einsteinsommerhaus,
n.d.). In July 1932, Einstein answered a letter he had received from the
Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. In his letter to Einstein, Freud had
inquired about Einstein’s view on the possibilities of avoiding war. For
Einstein, this conundrum of the existence of war could be solved quite
easily. In his response, Einstein wrote to Freud:
...As one immune from nationalist bias, I personally see a simple way of
dealing with the superficial (i.e. administrative) aspect of the problem: the
setting up, by international consent, of a legislative and judicial body to
settle every conflict arising between nations. Each nation would undertake
to abide by the orders issued by this legislative body, to invoke its decision
in every dispute, to accept its judgments unreservedly and to carry out
every measure the tribunal deems necessary for the execution of its decrees.

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88156-6_3
78 M. FRAUNDORFER
But here, at the outset, I come up against a difficulty; a tribunal is a human

institution which, in proportion as the power at its disposal is inadequate
to enforce its verdicts, is all the more prone to suffer these to be deflected
by extrajudicial pressure. This is a fact with which we have to reckon; law
and might inevitably go hand in hand, and juridical decisions approach
more nearly the ideal justice demanded by the community (in whose name
and interests these verdicts are pronounced) in so far as the community has
effective power to compel respect of its juridical ideal. But at present we
are far from possessing any supranational organization competent to render
verdicts of incontestable authority and enforce absolute submission to the
execution of its verdicts. Thus I am led to my first axiom: the quest of
international security involves the unconditional surrender by every nation,
in a certain measure, of its liberty of action, its sovereignty that is to say,
and it is clear beyond all doubt that no other road can lead to such security.
(in UNESCO 1985)
To end war and establish peace among nations, Einstein suggested

creating a supranational body that would stand above nation states vested
with the authority to enforce its decisions and hold states to account.
Einstein was famous for his pacifist and cosmopolitan world views and
became a well-known advocate for creating a world government. But in
his letter to Freud, he also conceded that “at present we are far from
possessing any supranational organization competent to render verdicts of
incontestable authority and enforce absolute submission to the execution
of its verdicts”. Einstein also emphasised that to create a world govern-
ment with the authority to tackle international challenges, such as war,
states needed to surrender their sovereignty.
When Einstein wrote this letter in July 1932, he was not aware that it
would be his last summer in his beloved countryside refuge. And when
the Nazis assumed power in Germany half a year later, he left the country
forever. His cosmopolitan ideas about a world government and the neces-
sity to limit state sovereignty were buried under the rubble of nationalist
hatred, small-mindedness, provincialism and ignorance. But his lofty ideas
live on. And today, almost one hundred years after Albert Einstein wrote
down his response to Sigmund Freud and posted it to Vienna, these ideas
are more urgent and pressing than ever before.
Einstein mused over the creation of a world government mainly as a
potential solution to the constant international challenge of war. Today,
we are confronted with a series of interconnected global and planetary
challenges that make Einstein’s idea even more plausible. How else to
3 CONCEPTUAL TOOLBOX 79
tackle a planetary challenge like climate change if not with a global insti-
tution that stands above nation states and has the supranational authority
to make states obey its decisions to develop a truly global response to a
global challenge?
After the end of the Second World War—and Einstein’s death in
1955—the international system has made enormous strides in developing
more international and transnational authorities above and beyond the
state. But neither the UN, the UN Security Council or other international
organisations, agencies or programmes like the WHO, FAO or UNEP
come even close to the supranational authority envisioned by Albert
Einstein. The European integration project, embodied today by the Euro-
pean Union, can be seen as the only political project in the international
system that is on its way to realising Einstein’s vision at the regional level.
Through the pooling of national interests and the gradual surrender of
state sovereignty, the European Union has developed a range of supra-
national decision-making procedures to craft European-wide responses to
transboundary challenges. But even the EU is far from perfect.
3.1.2 Disaggregated Authority in a Fragmented and Polycentric

System
At the global level, supranational authority, as envisioned by Albert
Einstein, continues to be conspicuous by absence. Instead of a world
government or a constitutionalised system of rule, we are stuck with
a fragmented and polycentric global order where authority is essen-
tially disaggregated into innumerable “spheres of authority” (Rosenau
2007), which exercise power through some form of rule-making authority
(Rosenau 2007; Zürn 2018). These spheres of authority can be govern-
ments, international organisations, advocacy networks, NGOs, global
social movements, companies, philanthropic foundations or cities, exer-
cising some degree of regulatory authority over their adherents within
a specific policy area. While essentially fragmented and disjointed, the
proliferation of these spheres of authority has contributed to undermining
the authority of the state and eroding the primacy of state-centric ideas
(the primacy of state territory and sovereignty, as well as the principle
of non-interference in a state’s domestic affairs). Yet, the state’s primacy
as the most powerful political actor and state-centric ideas of territorial
sovereignty continue to pervade any understanding of authority in global
governance.
80 M. FRAUNDORFER
In addition to the lack of a central and formalised authority above

the state, global governance also lacks a clear and strong separation of
powers (Zürn 2018, 58–60), as it is common in democratically governed
states. State governments and the secretariats of international and transna-
tional organisations form what might be regarded as the executive in
global governance. Something vaguely resembling a global legislative
might include the intergovernmental UN General Assembly where all
UN member states have one vote, regional parliaments like the Euro-
pean Parliament and the Mercosur Parliament or global assemblies like
the Global Parliament of Mayors. The global judicative encompasses insti-
tutions like the International Court of Justice, the judicial body of the
United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the Dispute Settle-
ment Body of the WTO, and regional courts, such as the Court of Justice
of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights and
the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
These global executive, legislative and judicative branches are falling
short of their national counterparts. They are too fragmented, uniting
different institutions with different organisational structures, mandates
and reach. And the implementation of these institutions’ decisions ulti-
mately relies on state governments’ political will. Thus, independent
executive, legislative and judicative branches attending all of humanity
do not exist. No less important, on many occasions, executive, legislative
and judicative functions are fused into one institution, as in the case of the
UN Security Council and the authority of the five permanent members
to adopt or block UN resolutions on international humanitarian inter-
ventions as the principal judges of international peace and security (Zürn
2018, 58–60).
Not only is governance beyond and above the state spread across
loosely connected spheres of authority without a clear separation of
powers. Those spheres of authority that were considered central plat-
forms of international cooperation among states since the end of the
Second World War, such as the UN Security Council and the UN General
Assembly along with other international organisations linked to the UN
system, are also seriously struggling to cope with the complexity of the
planetary and multidimensional nature of the global challenges of the
twenty-first century. For instance, the UN Security Council, with its five
permanent members and ten non-permanent members, no longer repre-
sents the geopolitical power balances of the twenty-first century and is
gridlocked most of the time, unable to make decisions on serious human-

itarian crises. The two permanent members France and the UK have
lost the influence they wielded at the end of the Second World War as
colonial powers and have shrunk to middle powers instead. Other impor-
tant middle powers, such as Germany and Japan, or continental powers,
such as Brazil and India, are not among the permanent five. And given
vested interests and deeply entrenched hierarchical structures, any efforts
to reform this UN body have failed.
3.1.3 Liquid and Reflexive Authority

The global governance system is crowded with many different overlapping
and loosely connected spheres of international and transnational authority
(see Chapter 2); lacks a central and overarching authority accepted by
all actors; and relies on a weak separation of powers. In such a system,
authority plays out very differently from what we would expect to see
at the local and state levels. Authority is crucial to exercise power, shape
political agendas, make and enforce rules and develop effective approaches
to existing problems and challenges. In contrast to formalised authorities
at the national level, such as a government, parliament and a supreme
court, global governance is principally shaped by informal norms and
institutions with weak authority claims.
This does not mean that authority in global governance is absent or
irrelevant. On many occasions, authority exercised in global governance
can carry substantial weight in liquid form in contrast to more solid and
formalised forms of authority found at the national level (Krisch 2017).
This is why some global governance scholars argue that authority at the
global level is essentially liquid. Liquid authority “reflects the absence of
formally established, ‘solid’ governmental powers in international affairs
and is linked to related phenomena, such as the strength of informal
norms and institutions […] or the emergence of (intergovernmental as
well as transnational) regime complexes” (Krisch 2017, 245).
If authority in the global sphere is often liquid, it is not necessarily weak.

Just as liquids may be as dense and heavy as solids, authority may be liquid
and weighty. Consider, for example, the case of credit rating agencies which
have long been recognized by investors as central to the determination of
risk and whose assessments have a major impact on financial markets and,
consequently, on governments and other credit seekers. Even if initially
82 M. FRAUNDORFER
based (at least in part) on empowerment by state institutions […], much

of the rating agencies’ authority is informal, expertise-based, and gained
in constant competition with each other–thus highly dynamic and liquid.
(Krisch 2017, 247)
The crucial idea of liquid authority resides in an understanding of

authority based on requests rather than commands. Liquid authority, in
contrast to more solid forms of authority, cannot be imposed. When
Albert Einstein laid out his idea of a world government to Sigmund
Freud, he was thinking of a form of solid and formalised global authority
so powerful that “[e]ach nation would undertake to abide by the orders
issued by this legislative body, to invoke its decision in every dispute, to
accept its judgments unreservedly and to carry out every measure the
tribunal deems necessary for the execution of its decrees” (in UNESCO
1985). However, international or transnational authorities in global
governance can seldom force states into action, least of all the most
powerful states like the US and increasingly China. On the contrary, many
international and transnational authorities depend on state and other non-
state actors’ goodwill, not least because states essentially finance these
authorities.
But states may readily accept and recognise the authority of an inter-
national or transnational organisation under certain circumstances. When
the WHO declares an infectious disease outbreak as a Public Health
Emergency of International Concern, allowing the WHO to recommend
a series of health measures to be implemented by state authorities to
contain the spread of the disease (travel restrictions, etc.), states usually
accept the WHO’s requests because of the organisation’s vast knowledge
of international health issues and expertise in pandemic preparedness. The
WHO does not issue commands as it does not have the power to do
so. Nevertheless, many decisions taken by the WHO, which affect state
sovereignty, are accepted by states. This was particularly the case during
the 2002/03 SARS outbreak, the first major pandemic in the twenty-first
century. During this global health crisis, the WHO was able to exercise
significant authority over its member states in coordinating the global
response to the pandemic (see Chapter 4). During the months of the
SARS outbreak, Einstein’s idea that “[e]ach nation would undertake to
abide by the orders issued by this legislative body” (in UNESCO 1985)
became a short-lived reality.
In this particular case, states recognised their limitations in tackling

the pandemic. At the same time, they accepted the superior and impar-
tial knowledge provided by the WHO, as well as the WHO’s expertise
and interpretation as to how to govern the global challenge of SARS. But
this authority is always in flux. Global governance institutions can never
take their authority for granted, as it is constantly assessed, scrutinised,
contested and re-evaluated. And this aspect makes authority in global
governance not only liquid but also reflexive, involving states’ “permanent
monitoring and consideration of the standards that make an authority
appealing and trustworthy” (Zürn 2017, 264).
As states’ expertise in the governance of complex and multidimensional
global challenges is essentially limited, international and transnational
actors can fill this gap and offer interpretations and requests that states
may follow in a given situation (Zürn 2018, 46). But international
and transnational actors lack solid authority as embodied by states.
Thus, reflexive authority in liquid form is temporary, always contested,
scrutinised, monitored and reflected on by states which are constantly
suspicious of delegating part of their sovereignty to international or
transnational institutions. Reflexive and liquid authority in global gover-
nance emerges from complex social processes involving multiple actors
and (epistemic) communities that negotiate and interpret the production
of knowledge and expertise in the governance of global challenges (Krisch
2017; Zürn 2017).
As the leading reflexive authority in global food security governance,
the FAO has always been suspiciously scrutinised and monitored by
its member states. The FAO’s repeated attempts to develop executive
powers to regulate world food prices were constantly blocked by powerful
member states and agricultural exporters that saw their national economic
interests at risk. Given powerful member states’ constant suspicion of
delegating parts of their sovereignty to the FAO at the expense of their
national interest, the FAO could never become a leading force in regu-
lating the world food market. And yet, the FAO’s superior technical
knowledge of all issues related to agriculture, hunger and food security in
the global system has been widely accepted by state and non-state actors
alike (see Chapter 5).
84 M. FRAUNDORFER
In global energy governance, a new reflexive authority came into exis-

tence in 2009 in the form of the International Renewable Energy Agency
(IRENA). Since the 1990s, the International Energy Agency (IEA) had
been criticised by member states for its lack of enthusiasm to promote
renewable energy. In the context of the global push for renewables,
several European governments turned away from the IEA, contesting
and critiquing the agency’s reflexive authority in global energy gover-
nance, not least because of the IEA’s strong focus on fossil fuels. Out
of these conflicts and contestations, IRENA emerged as a new reflexive
authority in renewable energy governance. While the IEA’s authority has
been challenged as a consequence of IRENA’s new presence, the IEA
continues to be highly respected for its technical function as an informa-
tion provider on the state of global energy production and consumption
(see Chapter 7).
Since its creation in 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) has fundamentally shaped the global agenda on climate
change with its regular scientific assessments about the state of the global
climate. As derived from its scientific assessments, the IPCC’s recom-
mendations on climate action are accepted by the international state
community as the basis for the UNFCCC climate negotiations to reduce
the global emissions of greenhouse gases (see Chapter 8). And still, the
IPCC’s scientific models are constantly scrutinised and monitored by UN
member states (Zürn 2017, 264).
In the mid-1990s, the Global Water Partnership and the World
Water Council emerged as the leading reflexive authorities governing
the world’s freshwater resources. Both institutions have become crucial
reflexive authorities in shaping the global water governance agenda and
crafting an institutionalised and integrated water governance framework
by promoting the concept of Integrated Water Resources Management
(IWRM), the widely accepted model for how to govern freshwater
resources (see Chapter 6). The interpretations and assessments of the
Global Water Partnership and the World Water Council for implementing
the concept of IWRM on the ground have been embraced by states,
NGOs, companies and think tanks since the late 1990s. But increasing
criticism of the effects of the neoliberal interpretation of the IWRM from
different stakeholders, particularly civil society, has exposed both authori-
ties to constant scrutiny, monitoring and contestation. Thus, the reflexive
authority of the Global Water Partnership and the World Water Council
remains in flux.
3.2 Legitimacy in Global Governance

This highly fragmented and polycentric order where authority is liquid
and reflexive at best, always contested and reflected upon, brings with it
a series of legitimation problems. Authority needs to be constantly legit-
imated by states and other global governance actors. Otherwise, a global
governance institution loses its (reflexive) authority to issue requests,
interpretations and assessments and enters a legitimacy crisis. The legit-
imacy crisis of the UN Security Council is a case in point. Reflecting
the power balance of the post-Second World War order, national govern-
ments which are not members of the exclusive Permanent-5 (US, China,
Russia, France and the UK), such as major continental powers like Brazil
and India, have increasingly contested the legitimacy of the UN Security
Council.
By contrast, the oldest international organisations, the Interna-
tional Telecommunication Union and the Universal Postal Union, have
preserved their legitimacy for more than a hundred years because of
the essential services they provide to member states. And particularly
those institutions that have promoted the dominant economic princi-
ples underpinning global governance, such as capitalism, free trade and
industrial production (see Chapter 2), have enjoyed a high degree of
legitimacy among state and non-state actors. In the same vein, increased
legitimacy translates into stronger (reflexive) authority and enhanced
problem-solving capacity (Dellmuth et al. 2019, 627; Tallberg et al. 2018,
3). However, the more the legitimacy of global governance institutions is
contested, the more those global governance institutions risk becoming
ineffective in addressing global challenges (Tallberg et al., 2018, 4).
3.2.1 Institutional and Structural Sources of Legitimacy

The legitimacy of global governance institutions is shaped by multiple
sources. One important set of sources refers to the institutional features
of global governance institutions. These institutional features, in turn, are
embedded in deeper social structures, which represent another vital set of
sources of legitimacy.
Let us turn to the institutional features first, which can be broadly
divided into two categories: procedure and performance. On the one
hand, institutional features can refer to an institution’s working and
decision-making mechanisms and global governance actors’ perceptions
86 M. FRAUNDORFER
of those (procedure). On the other hand, institutional features include the

results (or output) that these working and decision-making mechanisms
produce and how these results are perceived by other global governance
actors (performance). When characterising institutional procedure and
performance, three institutional characteristics are perceived as highly
relevant by different audiences in global governance in determining a
global governance institution’s legitimacy: technocracy, democracy and
fairness.
Technocratic procedure and performance refer to decision-making
based on efficient and effective expert knowledge. Technocratic procedure
rests on efficient and effective internal decision-making processes, with
an institution’s capacity to reach effective decisions based on scientific
knowledge and expertise. In turn, technocratic performance derives from
an institution’s effective problem-solving capacity, informed by scientific
knowledge (Scholte and Tallberg 2018, 63).
The legitimacy of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) almost entirely rests on its technocratic decision-making processes
(technocratic procedure) and its ability to inform the UNFCCC climate
negotiations with recommendations based on the latest climate science
(technocratic performance). The European Commission derives most
of its legitimacy from its technocratic ability to develop EU-wide
rules and regulations (Bradford 2020). During the 2002/03 SARS
pandemic, the WHO’s effective problem-solving capacity significantly
boosted the organisation’s legitimacy to act as a supranational authority
(see Chapter 4) (Image 3.1).
Democratic procedure and performance rest on participatory and
inclusive decision-making processes. Democratic procedure can be
Image 3.1 Institutional sources of legitimacy (Source Scholte and Tallberg

2018, 62)
boosted by the involvement of other global governance actors in internal

decision-making processes, the creation of more participatory and inclu-
sive working procedures and enhanced accountability measures. Demo-
cratic performance derives from an institution’s activities in increasing
popular participation among different audiences and achieving a higher
degree of public accountability (Scholte and Tallberg 2018, 63).
The Committee on World Food Security is a poignant example of an
institution that increased its legitimacy through democratic procedure
and performance. After its reform in 2009, the committee turned into
one of the most participatory and inclusive global governance mecha-
nisms, allowing NGOs and global social movements to have a say in its
internal working procedures and decision-making processes (democratic
procedure). In the same vein, through the meaningful involvement of
global social movements, the committee’s policy decisions has had an
impact on popular participation in societies across the world (democratic
performance) (see Chapter 5).
The Global Water Partnership and the World Water Council are
considered the central authorities in global water governance due to
their nature as multistakeholder platforms, bringing together govern-
ments, international organisations, civil society organisations, academic
organisations, companies and others in participatory decision-making
mechanisms, widening participation in the field of water governance (see
Chapter 6).
From a state-centric perspective, the International Energy Agency’s
legitimacy as the central authority in global energy governance has signif-
icantly suffered since the 1990s. The growing influence of developing
countries in global energy questions has challenged the IEA’s interna-
tional mandate as an organisation whose membership is limited to states
from the OECD world. By contrast, the legitimacy of the International
Renewable Energy Agency as the central authority on renewable energy
sources has been boosted by its universal membership (see Chapter 7).
In environmental governance, the UNFCCC climate negotiations are
perceived as highly legitimate by all UN member states due to their
universal character and the participation of all states (see Chapter 8).
Closely related to institutional sources of democracy are characteris-
tics of fairness. Fair procedure and performance emerge from impartial
and indiscriminate decision-making processes to avoid double standards
and unilateral and one-sided decisions. This is problematic in institutions
whose decision-making process is dominated by one very powerful state
88 M. FRAUNDORFER
(such as the US) or a small group of states. An institution’s performance

is perceived as fair when it achieves to contribute to human rights stan-
dards, human dignity and justice in an impartial way (Scholte and Tallberg
2018, 63).
In addition to its highly inclusive and participatory decision-making
mechanisms, the legitimacy of the Committee on World Food Security
was also boosted among developing countries and civil society actors
because of less partial (that is, less state-centric) decision-making processes
and its contributions to debates on the human right to food and global
justice in food governance.
The IEA’s legitimacy has suffered among states from the non-OECD
world because of the agency’s lacking universal character. The situation of
US and European dominance in the IEA has facilitated biased assessments
and policy decisions on energy issues. The legitimacy of other interna-
tional organisations has also suffered because of a general perception
of partial, unilateral and unfair decision-making among global gover-
nance actors. International financial organisations, such as the IMF and
the World Bank, are usually a common target of criticism for NGOs,
global social movements and developing countries as a consequence
of these organisations’ partial policy decisions, one-sidedly benefitting
high-income countries. Since its creation in the mid-1990s, the WTO
has attracted enormous criticism from social movements and developing
countries for its unfair trade rules. Thus, civil society actors and many
developing countries do not perceive the WTO as a legitimate global
governance institution.
It is clear from the previous examples that the three institutional
sources of legitimacy (technocracy, democracy and fairness) are closely
intertwined and in many ways mutually constitutive. The waning legiti-
macy of the UN Security Council is a case in point. Many non-permanent
members perceive the UN Security Council as highly undemocratic in its
decision-making process (democratic procedure). And it is questionable
whether its activities contribute to strengthening principles of democracy
and human dignity (democratic performance). Simultaneously, many UN
member states and civil society organisations criticise the UN Security
Council’s double standards in its decisions on humanitarian crises. Given
its outdated hierarchical structure, UN Security Council decisions are
usually dominated by a small group of states (unfair procedure), leading
to biased decisions on the fundamental question in which humanitarian
crisis to intervene (unfair performance). But most of the time, the UN
Security Council is gridlocked, resulting in slow and inefficient decision-

making (if not complete inaction) in the face of major humanitarian crises
and human rights violations (technocratic procedure and performance).
These institutional sources are not static and are often perceived
differently depending on the audience in question. While authoritarian
states place more emphasis on technocratic procedure and performance,
audiences in many democratic countries, as well as civil society actors,
are more attentive towards institutional sources of democracy and fair-
ness (Scholte and Tallberg 2018, 68). For instance, it is no surprise
that the transformation of the Committee on World Food Security into
a highly inclusive and participatory global governance mechanism was
driven by democratic states and civil society actors. In contrast, author-
itarian states are rather hostile towards more inclusive and participatory
decision-making processes which substantially involve civil society.
In the same vein, legitimacy beliefs can change over time. Given
changing political and economic contexts and shifts in the distribution
of power in the global system, as well as more profound structural trans-
formations involving the influential role of a growing number of state
and non-state actors, the priority given to these institutional sources
may change (Scholte and Tallberg 2018, 71). No less critical, ever more
pressing global environmental challenges put additional stress on global
governance institutions. Hence, the legitimacy of many international
organisations created after the Second World War is questioned ever more
frequently.
Let us now turn to deeper social structures as another crucial set of
sources of legitimacy. Institutional sources of legitimacy are embedded
in much deeper social structures which shape citizens’ daily lives and
worldviews (Scholte 2018, 77–95). What technocratic, democratic and
fair decision-making actually means and how these ideas are implemented
is influenced by a variety of deeper social structures that have shaped
the global governance system for decades and centuries. These deeper
social structures include the role of hegemonic states (Britain in the
nineteenth century, rivalry between the US and the USSR after the
Second World War, the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s, and
increasing rivalry between the US and China in the twenty-first century),
Westphalian principles (state-centric governance, territorial sovereignty,
national interests, geopolitical rivalry), capitalist principles of free trade
and trade liberalisation, a modern world view subordinating nature to
90 M. FRAUNDORFER
human power, the colonial legacy of global governance and neo-colonial

practices perpetuating inequality and injustice (see Chapter 2).
In the same vein, deeper social structures such as patriarchy, gender
inequality and the historically dominant role of men in shaping norms,
rules and decision-making processes according to masculine worldviews
also have a bearing on the meaning of the institutional sources of legiti-
macy (Scholte 2018, 78). Hence, legitimacy claims resting on principles
of democratic and fair decision-making are often influenced by the neces-
sity to address gender imbalances, the detrimental role of capitalism and
the consequences of neo-colonial practices. International trade and finan-
cial institutions are heavily contested by global social movements due to
their primary role in fostering capitalist market principles, free trade and
trade liberalisation, perpetuating and entrenching neo-colonial practices.
The global environmental challenges of the Anthropocene have a
profound impact on the deeper social structures of the global governance
system and the institutional sources the legitimacy of many global gover-
nance institutions rests on. The ever more devastating consequences of
the global climate crisis, which require ever more urgent global action, are
recasting, remoulding and reshaping some of these deeper social struc-
tures, reconfiguring the social fabric these structures and relationships
are embedded in. Global environmental challenges are also redefining
what technocracy, democracy and fairness mean in addressing the polit-
ical, socio-economic and ethical consequences of the global climate crisis.
After all, the incapacity of the global governance system to adequately
address global environmental challenges makes many citizens, civil society
actors and states question the legitimacy of the ideological foundations
the global governance architecture rests on.
3.2.2 (De)legitimation Practices

Institutional sources of legitimacy are always in flux, subject to ever-
changing circumstances. As the reflexive authority of global gover-
nance institutions is constantly examined, monitored and scrutinised by
global governance actors, so are the institutional sources of their legiti-
macy constantly confirmed and reconfirmed, contested and recontested
through manifold legitimation and delegitimation practices.
Global governance actors have a complex toolset at their disposal to
(de)legitimate global governance institutions. Bäckstrand and Söderbaum
provide a useful and simplified framework, which teases out three types of
practices supporting this toolset: discursive, institutional and behavioural

practices.
State and non-state actors can use discursive practices, such as
discourses, narratives and discursive frames, to support or contest an
institution’s legitimacy claims (Bäckstrand and Söderbaum 2018, 108).
In contesting the WTO’s legitimacy in the field of agricultural produc-
tion, La Via Campesina reframed the debate by coining the concept of
food sovereignty. This concept established a new narrative around food
production processes, mobilising peasant movements and smallholders
around the globe against international agricultural trade rules enforced
by the WTO (see Chapter 5). During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020,
US President Donald Trump sought to delegitimate the WHO’s authority
by promoting crude conspiracy theories revolving around the origins of
the virus. And in global environmental governance, some state govern-
ments and companies challenge the IPCC’s technocratic authority on
climate science through elaborate narratives of climate change denial.
Donald Trump, famous for his aggressive discourse of climate change
denial, pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement and thus tried
to delegitimate the UNFCCC climate negotiations. Meanwhile, indige-
nous movements have constructed a global narrative around climate
change, emphasising planetary health, the interconnectedness of the plan-
et’s ecosystems and humanity’s vital dependence on healthy ecosystems.
Informed by indigenous cosmologies, this narrative seeks to challenge the
modern and capitalist underpinnings of the UNFCCC climate negotia-
tions and the broader global environmental governance architecture (see
Chapter 8) (Image 3.2).
Institutional practices of (de)legitimation include institutional and
administrative reforms and the creation of participatory and inclusive
mechanisms to give voice to civil society actors. A foremost example is
the Committee on World Food Security, which was profoundly reformed
in 2009 after sharp criticism from state and non-state actors regarding its
incapacity to react to the 2007/08 global food crisis. The general dissat-
isfaction with the IEA’s obsolete agenda and outdated focus on fossil
fuels led some European states to push for a new energy agency, exclu-
sively focused on renewable energies: the International Renewable Energy
Agency.
Major institutional reforms or the creation of new global governance
institutions are exceptions in (de)legitimation practices. More common
delegitimation practices include the non-payment of fees, oppositional
92 M. FRAUNDORFER
Image 3.2 Types of legitimation and delegitimation (Source Bäckstrand and

Söderbaum 2018, 107)
voting or exiting an organisation. For instance, the US government, crit-

ical of the reformed Committee on World Food Security from the very
beginning, has since engaged in oppositional voting and other obstructive
practices to undermine the committee’s legitimacy (Fraundorfer 2018a,
90–126). The US government also has a long history of withdrawing
funding from international organisations to express its dissatisfaction with
an organisation and its policy decisions. In 2011, US President Barack
Obama withdrew financial contributions from UNESCO as a response to
the organisation’s decision to include Palestine as a UNESCO member
(Williams 2011). US President Trump exited the 2015 Paris Agreement
in 2017 and the WHO in 2020; steps which Trump’s successor, Joe
Biden, then reversed in early 2021. The exit of the UK from the EU
in January 2020 expressed the UK’s dissatisfaction with EU principles,
among them the free movement of people.
Behavioural practices of (de)legitimation are closely linked to discur-
sive and institutional practices of (de)legitimation and affect legitimacy
perceptions among global governance audiences through performance
reviews, opinion polls, protests and campaigns (Bäckstrand and Söder-

baum 2018, 112). Thus, the global protest campaigns organised by
the food sovereignty and food justice movements contest the legiti-
macy of the global food system (see Chapter 5). The worldwide protests
and campaigns of Greenpeace, Oxfam, Extinction Rebellion, indigenous
communities and others contest the legitimacy of the central institutions
underpinning global environmental governance, particularly the capitalist
logic of the UNFCCC climate negotiations (see Chapter 8).
States can also express behavioural practices of delegitimation. As a
result of its dissatisfaction with the IEA and global energy governance,
since the 1990s Germany had invested heavily in lobbying other states
to create an international renewable energy agency, which was ultimately
created in 2009 (see Chapter 7). Meanwhile, international organisations
boost their legitimacy through behavioural practices, such as public rela-
tions, symbolism, rituals or their own financial assistance programmes.
The EU, for instance, does this through its anthem, flag and EU funding
mechanisms (Bäckstrand and Söderbaum 2018, 112).
As a result of delegitimation practices, the legitimacy of global gover-
nance institutions can decline so strongly that they enter a legitimacy crisis
(Zelli 2018). Over the past one hundred and fifty years, this happened
to many international organisations, most prominently the League of
Nations whose short history was riddled with legitimacy crises. Such a
crisis can be so severe that its ramifications affect the broader governance
architecture. In the case of the League of Nations, it contributed to the
collapse of the international order. If global governance actors respond to
such a crisis by creating alternative institutions, such actions risk increasing
the fragmentation, complexity and gridlocked nature of global gover-
nance (Zelli 2018, 175). As a response to the IEA’s legitimacy crisis in the
1990s and 2000s, a small group of states created IRENA as an alternative
institution. Before its reform in 2009, the Committee on World Food
Security entered a major legitimacy crisis during the 2007/08 global
food crisis. And the legitimacy crisis of the United Nations Environ-
ment Programme (UNEP) was confronted through a modest reform of
UNEP’s decision-making structures in 2012.
94 M. FRAUNDORFER
3.3 Democracy in Global Governance

3.3.1 People Power
As the previous sections laid out, conceptions of authority and legiti-
macy in global governance are closely tied to democratic principles. And
particularly since the end of the Cold War, with a growing number of
democracies across the world, many global governance actors have pushed
for instances of democracy beyond the state.
But as with the concept of authority, given the particular character-
istics of global governance, democracy at the global level needs to be
understood differently from democracy at the national and local levels.
Considering the fragmented nature of global governance, its largely
absent separation of powers and weak constitutionalised order, democracy
in global governance should be understood as democratic practices rather
than represented by formal institutions as they exist in democracies at the
national level, such as a democratic government, parliament, democratic
parties, a democratic constitution, strong separation of powers, elections
and so forth. After all, none of these formal democratic institutions exist
at the global level and will not come into existence for the foreseeable
future.
But this situation does not imply that democracy in global governance
cannot exist or is unlikely to unfold. It is possible to approach democ-
racy beyond the state from a process-oriented perspective, returning to
the very roots of democratic practices. Democratic practices in their
most basic expression rest on (1) preventing the abuse of power by the
few and (2) power-sharing by opening up decision-making processes to
those actors who are usually excluded, sidelined or marginalised. Prac-
tices in global governance mechanisms can be characterised as democratic
when they open up decision-making mechanisms to other actors in global
governance, most importantly civil society actors, and when these prac-
tices contribute to preventing the abuse of power by the few, that is,
powerful governments and multinational companies.
Similar to (de)legitimation practices, democratic practices can include
social mobilisation processes and the democratisation of global politics
from below, focusing on the democratisation potential of civil society
organisations and social movements, reforms of international organisa-
tions, global judicial power and joint action between civil society actors
and reform-minded democratic states (Archibugi 1993; Archibugi et al.

2010; De Sousa Santos 2006; Dryzek and Stevenson 2012; Florini 2000;
Fraundorfer 2018a; Imber 2006; Silberschmidt et al. 2008; Smith 2008).
Many scholars are convinced that democratic alternatives to conven-
tional governance models can help tackle different aspects of global
environmental challenges in socially and environmentally sustainable ways.
These democratic alternatives particularly highlight the role of ecolog-
ical and indigenous approaches in innovating and renewing democratic
practices (see Chapter 9). For instance, these approaches emphasise the
relevance of ecological and climate security, participatory and deliberative
structures which include people as citizens rather than consumers, the
appreciation of local and indigenous communities’ cultures, an under-
standing of our interconnectedness with other species and the planet’s
ecosystems, the protection of environmental resources through stew-
ardship and so forth (Acosta 2013; Madron and Jopling 2003; Shiva
2015).
All these ideas emphasise a return to the roots of democracy, that is,
more people power through more inclusive decision-making processes
to confront the consequences of climate change, the mass extinction of
the planet’s species, the depletion of Earth’s resources, the marginalisa-
tion of many local cultures and indigenous peoples worldwide and the
general corrosion of democratic systems through the power of corpo-
rations, economic elites and capitalist structures. What all these ideas
have in common is the recognition that the particular characteristics of
the contemporary global order require a different way of thinking about
global democracy as compared to the representative model of democracy
at the national level.
Many scholars stress the critical role of non-state actors such as civil
society organisations, social movements, citizens, transnational advocacy
networks and other cross-border communities in the endeavour to grad-
ually democratise the global system. In the same vein, these alternative
approaches include concerns about global challenges such as climate
change, mass species extinction or food insecurity. By including voices
from local communities, marginalised groups and peoples, decision-
making mechanisms must be recast to allow for forms of democracy
other than the representative and electoral model dominant in national
democracies. Throughout this book, we will come across several hope-
inspiring alternatives to conventional governance processes that rest on
these democratic principles.
96 M. FRAUNDORFER
3.3.2 Expanding the Community of Rights Holders

Since the creation of the first permanent international organisations
and cross-border mechanisms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century, global governance has focused on promoting social, labour and
human rights. And next to the promotion of international trade and
industry interests, the development of rights-based approaches has been
one of the principal concerns of global governance (see Chapter 2).
After the creation of the United Nations in 1945 and the adoption of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, global governance
actors have contributed to the emergence of a complex and multilay-
ered international human rights regime, reinforcing and codifying human
rights in international law in unprecedented ways.
Notwithstanding the extraordinary success story of the international
human rights regime, the environmental challenges of the Anthropocene,
such as species extinction, natural habitat loss and the degradation of
ecosystems across the planet, require rethinking the meaning of rights.
That is, in addition to guaranteeing and promoting human dignity in the
form of human rights, a global debate has emerged on how to grant rights
to non-human animals and parts of nature (Cavalieri and Singer 1993;
Cochrane 2018; Nash 1989; Singer 1995; Stone 2010). Confronted
with the failure of traditional conservation efforts and the acceleration of
natural habitat loss and mass species extinction, animal rights and rights of
nature scholars and activists have advanced the argument that animals and
parts of nature must be granted basic rights to ensure their improved legal
protection and, in the case of non-human animals, respect their dignity as
sentient beings.
While codification and implementation efforts of animal rights and
rights of nature are still in their infancy, often highly contested and flatly
rejected by many governments, the global animal rights and rights of
nature movement has been able to celebrate some successes. Several South
American countries have integrated rights of nature into their consti-
tutions, several great apes have been granted legal rights (Fraundorfer
2018b), and since 2017 some rivers across the world have been granted
legal personhood. In the rights of nature debate, one of the most far-
reaching decisions has been taken in New Zealand, when the Whanganui
River was declared a legal person (see Chapter 6).
In a global governance system whose order depends on collective

actions involving a multiplicity of state and non-state actors, the imple-
mentation of human rights, non-human animal rights and rights of nature
cannot be limited to the realm of states alone. For instance, the philoso-
pher Carol Gould argues that the realisation of human rights also includes
non-state actors. Her concept of transnational solidarity emphasises this
point. While solidarity has commonly been conceptualised in the national
and international context, Gould seeks to reconceptualise the notion of
solidarity in the context of the transnational, interrelative, interconnected
and networked realities of the global governance system (Gould 2014).
Solidarity, in her account, goes beyond the solidarity among individ-
uals and includes the transnational relations among groups, associations
and other organisations. Hence, Gould understands solidarity as a form of
social empathy with distant others, involving joint action among individ-
uals and organisations to strengthen the rights of distant others (Gould
2014, 99–111).
The solidarity conceptualized here centrally involves an affective [in italics

in the original] element, combined with an effort to understand the
specifics of others’ concrete situation, and to imaginatively construct for
oneself their feelings and needs. If possible, listening to people’s own
accounts of these is important. Solidarity in this reading centrally makes
reference to what has been called the social standpoint and social context
of the others, all of which may in fact not be similar to one’s own. Thus,
solidarity in this sense is a disposition to act toward others who are recog-
nized as different from [in italics in the original] oneself, by way of being
differently situated. (Gould 2007, 156–157)
How does this sense of transnational solidarity emerge among different

transnational actors and individuals in the global system? Here, one of
Gould’s suggestions refers to “transnational common projects” (Gould
2007, 158; Gould 2014, 112), involving social movements, scientists
and other organisations to fight for more global justice and institution-
alise “solidaristic interrelations” (Gould 2007, 158) in the long term.
Transnational common projects can be global governance institutions or
global movements that challenge, question and contest the conventional
political and economic dynamics of global governance and suggest more
democratic and solidaristic alternatives, such as the Committee on World
Food Security, the food sovereignty and food justice movements (see
98 M. FRAUNDORFER
Chapter 5), the rights of nature movements (see Chapter 6) and indige-
nous movements fighting for alternatives to conventional governance
models (see Chapter 8).
Gould developed the concept of transnational solidarity with human
rights in mind. But the idea of transnational solidarity can easily be applied
to those movements fighting for non-human animal rights and rights of
nature, when NGOs, civil rights organisations, legal experts, scholars and
indigenous communities across the world “stand in solidarity” with non-
human animals, forests, rivers and other parts of nature, campaigning to
eliminate the suffering that non-human animals and ecosystems endure at
the hands of modern human societies.
3.3.3 Participation
In a global governance system whose main features make it exceedingly
difficult to install elements of representative democracy similar to those
present in democratic states (elections, parties, parliaments, etc.), attempts
to establish elements of participatory democracy can be much more
fruitful, tying in with the idea of people power and democratic practices.
According to the democracy scholar Larry Diamond, a well-functioning
democratic system relies on “multiple avenues for the ‘people’ to express
their interests and preferences, to influence policy, and to scrutinize and
check the exercise of state power continuously, in between elections
as well as during them” (Diamond 1999, 219). The people, however,
need to be organised in a vibrant civil society to exercise influence and
contribute to a more strengthened and consolidated democracy.
In the context of the Anthropocene, it is vital to provide mean-
ingful opportunities for the participation of those civil society actors who
have been constantly sidelined and whose livelihoods have been regularly
threatened by dominant global governance processes. Here, it is essen-
tial to involve those communities across the world, who have historically
embraced ecological and nature-based conceptions of the world, such as
indigenous and other local communities. Civil society organisations can
contribute to the development and consolidation of democratic practices
by (1) monitoring, checking and restraining state power, (2) stimulating
citizen participation in political processes, (3) educating citizens about
their rights and duties and (4) creating new channels of access to political
processes (beyond formal elections) for citizens to articulate their interests
(Florini 2000; Kaldor 2003; Scholte 2011).
The development of different aspects of participatory democracy on

the global stage makes sense because of (1) the multiplicity of actors
present in global governance and (2) the significant number of state and
non-state actors excluded from principal decision-making processes. Civil
society participation has the potential to enhance the democratic processes
of global governance mechanisms by representing the needs and inter-
ests of local communities, monitoring governments’ activities, holding
governments accountable to human rights standards and exercising pres-
sure through social campaigns (Florini 2000; Scholte 2011). In a global
system characterised by an ever-higher degree of participation and influ-
ence of actors other than the state, the inclusion of civil society actors can
lead to the input and representation of different ideas and policy proposals
(Bexell et al. 2010; Tallberg and Uhlin 2012).
The global peasant movement La Via Campesina has become a major
voice in contesting global food production processes and advocating for
ecological and locally sourced food production models (see Chapter 5).
Indigenous communities across the world have formed a global indige-
nous movement to bear on international climate negotiations and reshape
global environmental governance inspired by indigenous cosmologies (see
Chapter 8). And the granting of legal personhood to the Whanganui
River in New Zealand in 2017 is an intriguing example of how govern-
ments and indigenous communities can collaborate democratically to
protect the legal rights of rivers (see Chapter 6).
Despite the important role civil society actors and social movements
play in advancing democratic practices both nationally and globally, essen-
tial questions about the democratic character of these organisations and
movements remain. It should not be assumed that civil society is, for its
own sake, a force for more democracy and social justice. Attention should
be paid to questions about which civil society actors participate, how they
are involved in decision-making structures and to which policy issues they
contribute (Bexell et al. 2010, 87; Tallberg and Uhlin 2012, 216–17). As
in the case of the international society of states, global civil society is
characterised by huge power imbalances with more powerful and influ-
ential civil society actors from the developed global north usually more
often represented in global governance mechanisms than those from the
global south (Bexell et al. 2010, 87). These power imbalances extend to
questions of financial resources, administrative and technical capacities,
mobilisation efforts and networking power. By the same token, not all
civil society actors embrace democratic, liberal and progressive ideas. As
100 M. FRAUNDORFER
the right-wing populist wave in many democratic countries has illustrated

in the late 2010s, some civil society movements can also distinguish them-
selves through anti-democratic, racist and misogynist behaviour, as well as
climate change denialism.
For civil society actors to be seen as a serious force for more democracy
at the global level, they need to be able to build up their own demo-
cratic structures. Meaningful civil society participation in international
decision-making processes is still rare, and their participation remains
largely limited to occasional inputs to agenda-setting, implementation and
enforcement (Bexell et al. 2010, 87). Therefore, it is important to distin-
guish between different degrees of participation such as passive (observer
status or consultation), active (presenting information, making statements
in the decision-making body or contributing to the implementation of
policies) or full (voting rights and agenda-setting power) participation. So
far, full civil society participation in terms of voting and agenda-setting
power remains an exception (Tallberg and Uhlin 2012, 218). But in a
global governance system where states continue to be the most powerful
actors, opportunities for civil society organisations to exercise effective
political action, strengthen democratic processes and promote alterna-
tive governance models arise when states start to seriously cooperate with
civil society organisations and set up joint participatory decision-making
processes (see Chapters 5–7).
3.3.4 Accountability
Apart from enhanced mechanisms of participation, democratic global
governance institutions also need to address questions of accountability.
According to Tallberg and Uhlin, “[a]ccountability as an ideal entails that
some actors have the right to hold other actors to a set of standards, to
assess whether they have fulfilled their responsibilities in the light of these
standards, and to impose sanctions if they find that these responsibilities
have not been met” (2012, 211). Given the distinctive characteristics of
the global governance system lacking any existing overarching authority,
which could, for example, impose sanctions on actors violating human
rights principles, accountability cannot be realised in the same way as
within the state. This challenge does not imply that it is impossible to
hold global governance actors accountable for their actions. The multi-
plicity of actors and the networked nature of the global governance system
provide the background against which several accountability mechanisms

can be designed.
One of these mechanisms refers to reputational accountability, exer-
cised in transnational networks and involving different state and non-state
actors, when one group of actors can hold to account another group
of actors by challenging their reputation through naming and shaming
(Benner et al. 2005, 75–76). Mechanisms and procedures to pursue
reputational accountability may include voting procedures, monitoring
and policy review activities (Tallberg and Uhlin 2012, 218–220). Trans-
parency plays a particularly important role in this context. Information on
working methods, policy rules, selection procedures and funding should
be accessible and published on the internet (Benner et al. 2005, 77).
It is also essential to distinguish between internal and external account-
ability. While internal accountability relates to the principles an institu-
tion’s internal decision-making process is governed by, external account-
ability refers to those communities and people affected by these decisions
(Tallberg and Uhlin 2012, 211). It is much more challenging to ensure
external accountability than internal accountability. Internal account-
ability can be enhanced on the basis of a participatory and inclusive
process which includes various groups of actors and therefore creates
reputational pressure on all groups of actors involved. External account-
ability is much harder to achieve due to the peculiar characteristics of
the global governance system and the existing power imbalances between
states and civil society actors.
Civil society actors play a major role in ensuring reputational, internal
and external accountability. Since they often claim to represent those
communities and citizens affected by the decisions made in global gover-
nance mechanisms, they find themselves in a particularly responsible
position to advance democratic accountability of the decision-making
processes in global governance mechanisms. Civil society actors have
advanced democratic accountability in global governance in the following
ways (Scholte 2004, 218–222): They have called on governments to be
more transparent in their decision-making procedures and demanded that
policy documents and reports are not only made public but written in a
language understandable to those people not involved in the decision-
making process. They have engaged in monitoring and reviewing the
effectiveness of governance mechanisms, or the activities of governments
in compliance with international human rights legislations. They have
drawn the attention of the mass media, national parliaments or courts
102 M. FRAUNDORFER
to governments’ wrongdoing in global governance and pressured them

to change course. They have campaigned for the establishment of formal
accountability mechanisms to monitor the decision-making processes of
international organisations or promote good practices of corporate social
responsibility (Scholte 2004, 230–32).
Sceptics, however, point out that many civil society organisations lack
the legitimacy to do so due to their undemocratic structures. One central
challenge lies in the accountability of civil society actors themselves. When
they are not able to build up adequate accountability mechanisms in their
own organisations, it is difficult to demand more accountability from
governments. Another criticism refers to the fact that the representatives
of civil society organisations are not legitimised by mass elections and
do not answer to a specific population within clearly delineated borders
as democratically elected governments are supposed to do (Dahl 1999;
Keohane 2006). In the same vein, those non-state actors who usually
bear the brunt of holding states accountable just do not have sufficient
power to control and sanction states, the primary challenge in securing
external accountability.
Apart from civil society actors, global governance institutions can also
hold states to account. Some of these institutions include the European
Court of Human Rights, UN special rapporteurs and other interna-
tional organisations through monitoring and review activities. In addition,
accountability can be enhanced through the creation of human rights
commissions, ombudspersons and other institutions to issue human rights
impact assessments and monitoring reports (Goodhart 2011, 52–54).
3.4 Networks and Nodes in Global Governance

3.4.1 Networks as the Glue in Global Governance
Given its fragmented, decentralised and polycentric nature boasting coor-
dination efforts among multiple state and non-state actors, the existence
of liquid authorities and weak constitutionalisation, power dynamics
in global governance are mediated by, channelled through and struc-
tured by networks and nodes (Braithwaite 2004–2005; Castells 2009;
Drahos 2004; Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2017; Rosenau 2006; Slaughter
2004). Particularly since the 1990s, given the proliferation of non-
state actors, the increasing fragmentation of global governance processes
and the ongoing decentralisation of states’ resources, power and influ-
ence, transnational and global networking activities among non-state
actors have become a key characteristic of global governance (Eilstrup-

Sangiovanni 2017, 691; Rosenau 2006).
The increasing influence of non-state actors has been due to their
ability to organise across borders in transnational networks, campaign for
a specific cause and form a global force that can bear on governments
and international organisations and create novel governance dynamics.
Just to name a few, the Mine Ban Treaty, the International Criminal
Court, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and
the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons would not have
come to life without the global networking efforts of civil society actors.
Social movements like La Via Campesina and the Association for the
Taxation of Financial Transactions and for Citizens’ Action (ATTAC), as
well as NGOs like Greenpeace, ActionAid, Oxfam and Médecins Sans
Frontières, use their networking powers to contest global governance
institutions like the WTO and the IMF and have become a networked
global force to introduce alternative ideas and governance models on a
wide range of policy issues. Communities marginalised by the dominant
forces of global governance, such as peasants, smallholders, indigenous
communities, animal rights activists, rights of nature activists and many
others whose ideas go against the grain of the dominant economic logic
of global governance, have gained a voice and acquired agency through
global networking efforts.
These so-called transnational advocacy networks usually comprise
“those actors working internationally on an issue, who are bound together
by shared values, a common discourse, and dense exchanges of informa-
tion and services” (Keck and Sikkink 1999, 89). By pooling resources,
mobilising actors across borders and exchanging information and knowl-
edge, these networks campaign for those common causes which are
ignored or neglected by governments (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 8–12).
Governments also engage in networking efforts, as Anne-Marie
Slaughter illustrates.
Start thinking about a world of governments, with all the different

institutions that perform the basic functions of governments—legislation,
adjudication, implementation—interacting both with each other domesti-
cally and also with their foreign and supranational counterparts. States still
exist in this world; indeed, they are crucial actors. But they are “disaggre-
gated.” They relate to each other not only through the Foreign Office,
104 M. FRAUNDORFER
but also through regulatory, judicial, and legislative channels. (Slaughter

2004, 5)
In Slaughter’s view, governments are disaggregated into vertical and

horizontal government networks. In horizontal government networks,
national officials engage in cross-border cooperation with their coun-
terparts from other national governments (2004, 145). In vertical
government networks, national officials engage with their supranational
counterparts in supranational institutions, such as the European Court of
Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Commis-
sion, the International Criminal Court or the WTO Appellate Body
(Slaughter 2004, 163). This means that “international relations” are
not only conducted by a government’s Foreign Office. In addition,
each ministry and governmental agency has its own “Foreign Office”,
conducting its own “foreign affairs” through international and transna-
tional networks with their national counterparts. In Slaughter’s words,
“[g]overnment networks already span every region in the globe, linking
the majority of the world’s countries in one way or another; from the
Commonwealth to the Nordic System to APEC, from the European
Union to NAFTA.” (2004, 163). International organisations, such as the
WTO, the WHO, the IMF or the FAO, are buzzing with government
networks, as it is there where trade, finance or health ministers usually
meet their national counterparts (Slaughter 2004, 164).
In the late 1990s, multistakeholder organisations became another
phenomenon that started to reshape global governance processes. In
multistakeholder organisations, all relevant global governance actors come
together to engage in collective decision-making on global public poli-
cies. In global public policy networks (Stone 2008), or multistakeholder
networks (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2017), representatives of civil society,
international organisations, the private sector and governments join forces
to address transboundary problems, develop solutions for “common
property problems” that affect oceans, the atmosphere or Antarctica, and
tackle problems that affect all countries simultaneously, such as epidemics,
population growth, urbanisation and so forth (Stone 2008, 25). Whereas
civil society actors in transnational advocacy networks are often exclu-
sively guided by principles and values, advocating for policy change,
actors in global public policy networks are also guided by self-interested
goals and profits, primarily concerned with the improvement of already
existing policies (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2017, 693). As Huppé et al. argue,
“[b]ecause they span socioeconomic, political, and cultural differences,

[global public policy] networks can transform what might otherwise
degenerate into counterproductive confrontations across public, private
and civil society sectors into constructive, collaborative relationships”
(2012, 7).
Both the Global Water Partnership and the World Water Council (see
Chapter 6) are poignant examples of such networks in global water gover-
nance. Given their role as multistakeholder platforms, bringing together
thousands of actors from the private sector, civil society, government,
international organisations, research institutions and others across the
globe on water governance, they have become the leading institutions
in global water governance. Networks like the Global Water Partnership
and the World Water Council provide a broad variety of global governance
actors with a platform to pool their different interests, reach consensus,
take collective decisions and share responsibilities and funding commit-
ments on vital transnational challenges (Stone 2008, 28). Transnational
city networks, such as the C40 Cities Group (see Chapter 8) and smart
city networks (see Chapter 7) also tend to fall into the category of global
public policy networks, binding together city governments, national
governments, tech companies and philanthropic foundations to advance
urban climate actions and energy solutions.
As civil society mobilises through transnational advocacy networks, so
do private sector organisations through transnational regulatory networks,
developing certification schemes, international codes of conduct, labelling
systems or international standards, such as in the case of the Forest
Stewardship Council, a certification scheme to ensure the sustainable
management of forests (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2017, 694; Stone 2008,
28).
3.4.2 Nodes as Concentrations of Power in Global Governance

Networks in global governance are “unspecified system[s] of intercon-
nected entities or nodes” (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2017, 690) and as such
lack a clear central command structure. In this sense, the concept of nodal
governance with a particular focus on highly connected nodes within a
network can help us better understand the impact of networks in global
governance (Burris et al. 2005, 2008; Castells 2000a, b, 2004; Drahos
2004; Dupont 2004; Shearing and Wood 2003; Wood 2006). Castells
106 M. FRAUNDORFER
underlined that “[a] network has no center, just nodes” (Castells 2004,
3) in the sense that “[a] network is a set of interconnected nodes […]
[which] increase their importance for the network by absorbing more
relevant information and processing it more efficiently” (Castells 2009,
19–20). Nodes can be made up of “individuals, groups, organizations, or
states, and ties between them could be channels for exchange of both
material and nonmaterial resources (money, goods, technology, infor-
mation, knowledge, reputation, ideas, etc.)” (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2017,
690).
Nodes vary in institutional strength, resources, methods and mentali-
ties depending on the activities of their actors and the linkages with other
nodes or networks (Burris et al. 2005, 39). Consequently, nodes also
vary in their ability to concentrate power. Hein and Moon explain that
“[n]odal governance offers a useful way of thinking about the ‘power
map’ in a governance system, and the key characteristics of effective
governing nodes” (Hein and Moon 2013, 36). Castells sums up the
aspect of power involved in nodal coordination by emphasising that “a
node is able to concentrate power in form of resources, discourses, insti-
tutions and methods which then may be used by one or more actors
to achieve specific outcomes or to restrain other actors from achieving
specific outcomes” (Castells 2004, 3).
According to Burris et al., “[n]odal governance […] explains how a
variety of actors operating within social systems interact along networks
to govern the systems they inhabit” (Burris et al. 2005, 33). In the same
vein, they suggest that a node can bind different actors together through a
structural framework to concentrate and mobilise ideas, technologies and
resources (Burris et al. 2005, 37–38). Several nodes together can create
a network which may result in the creation of other (super-structural)
nodes even stronger in their capacity of exercising influence due to more
resources and a stronger institutional framework (Burris et al. 2005, 38–
39).
At the interfaces of networks and nodes, the activities of global gover-
nance actors can perpetuate and entrench dominant ideas and principles
in global governance, reinforcing already existing relationships of power.
For instance, Braithwaite (2004–2005) showed how in the 1990s the
US government was able to shape and dominate global business regimes
by building nodes of networked governance and concentrating power
at crucial nodes of governance. Similarly, Drahos (2004) showed that
intellectual property owners like US pharmaceutical companies success-

fully enforced intellectual property rights by means of nodal coordination
which finally led to the TRIPS Agreement in 1994. Drahos characterised
the TRIPS Agreement as a super-structural node, “a structure that brings
together actors who represent networks in order to concentrate resources
and technologies for the purpose of achieving a common goal” (Drahos
2004, 405).
But global governance actors can also take advantage of the networked
and nodal structure of global governance to introduce new governance
dynamics. During its rise to a global power in the 2000s and early
2010s, Brazil took advantage of nodal structures to globally disseminate
new governance ideas, develop new networks and nodal assemblages to
increase its presence and influence in global governance dynamics and
contribute to reshaping some key dynamics of global governance, partic-
ularly in the area of global food production processes and global health
(Fraundorfer 2015).
Hein and Moon consider the World Health Assembly (WHA), the
principal decision-making body of the World Health Organisation, as the
principal super-structural node in global health governance due to its
function as the central platform in global health:
The WHA ensures the interface between the delegates of its members
(nation-states) as well as the interface of these delegates with the repre-
sentatives of many other global health actors. [...] Formal and informal
meetings take place, agreements are reached, deals are struck, NGOs exert
influence, the private sector lobbies, receptions are organized. In short, key
global health players participate in the Assembly even if they are not part
of the formal meetings. (Hein and Moon 2013, 40–41)
In environmental governance, crucial super-structural nodes are the

UNEP Environment Assembly, the highest-level decision-making body
on the environment, or the annual COPs of the UNFCCC climate nego-
tiations, which shape the international decision-making process on global
CO2 emissions reductions (see Chapter 8). In freshwater governance, the
World Water Council’s World Water Forums, the largest event on water
issues in the world, brings together tens of thousands of actors from all
governance levels and sectors on water every three years (see Chapter 6).
As such, this super-structural node plays a vital role in shaping the global
water agenda.
108 M. FRAUNDORFER
Cities like London, Tokyo, New York and others have been described
as strategic nodes in the global economy and key drivers of capitalist glob-
alisation, densely connected through communication and transportation
technologies (Curtis 2010; Sassen 1991, 2002, 2005; Smith and Timber-
lake 2002). In addition to their role as hubs of transport, commerce,
trade and communications, cities also function as global governance
hubs (or nodes), with a few select cities in the world hosting the large
majority of global governance institutions and thus concentrating power
and influence in global governance in a handful of world cities (see
Chapter 2). One such global governance city hub is Geneva, which Hein
and Moon describe as a super-node in global health governance (2013,
161). Geneva, or in Hein and Moon’s words “the Geneva-Connection”,
unites all relevant global health interfaces, actors and activities in one loca-
tion making the city the principal place for norm-building processes in
global health governance.
What we call the “Geneva Connection” can be seen as a microcosm of

the whole complex of interfaces that moved the process of global health
governance: it is a centre of communication producing at least elements
of a common understanding of affairs, which are then reintroduced into
command centers of political action (WTO, WHO, the capitals of powerful
nation states, and also important CSOs [civil society organisations] like
MSF). (Hein and Moon 2013, 162)
In this sense, we could also speak of a Rome Connection in food secu-

rity governance, a Bonn-Connection in environmental governance, a
Washington-Connection in financial governance or a Brussels-Connection
in EU governance, concentrating power and reflecting larger geopolitical
power structures.
3.5 Summary
3.5.1 Authority and Legitimacy in Global Governance
Global governance institutions with a solid authority to issue commands
and directly coerce states into compliance, involving “the unconditional
surrender by every nation […] of its liberty of action, its sovereignty that
is to say”, as imagined by Albert Einstein, are hard to come by in global
governance. As the global governance scholar Michael Zürn emphasises,
“[l]eaving the era of neatly separated territorial states does not lead us
to a world state, or to a moving of the constitutional state to a higher

level. There is no constitutionalized place for the final decision” (2017,
277). Instead, in a fragmented and polycentric global governance system
of loosely coupled, conflictive and competing spheres of authority and the
weak separation of powers, the authority of many global governance insti-
tutions tends to be liquid and reflexive. This liquid and reflexive authority
is based on requests, interpretations and assessments, which are constantly
scrutinised, monitored and contested by global governance actors.
The liquid and reflexive authority of global governance institutions
draws on several sources of legitimacy. One important set of sources
includes those institutional features of global governance institutions that
are perceived as crucial by many global governance actors and audiences.
These institutional features refer to an institution’s technocratic, demo-
cratic and fair decision-making procedures and performances and how
these are perceived by global governance audiences (citizens, states, non-
state actors). The three institutional qualities are closely interconnected
and can mutually reinforce or weaken an institution’s legitimacy. They
are constantly confirmed and reconfirmed, contested and recontested
through (de)legitimation processes, which include discursive, institutional
and behavioural practices.
Simultaneously, these institutional features are embedded in deeper
social structures, another important set of sources of legitimacy, which
shape the meaning of democracy, fairness and technocracy in the first
place. These social structures refer to deeper organising principles that
underpin the dominant dynamics and processes of global governance,
such as male dominance, capitalism, free trade, trade liberalisation, geopo-
litical rivalries and so forth.
3.5.2 Democracy in Global Governance

In (de)legitimating the reflexive authority of a global governance institu-
tion, notions of democracy have come to play a particularly relevant role
since the early 1990s, which is associated with the growing number of
democracies in the international system and the ever more influential role
of civil society actors. Democracy is a messy affair. And given weak consti-
tutionalisation at the global level, democracy in global governance is even
messier. But there is potential in global governance for democratic prac-
tices to unfold. Global governance mechanisms, and coordinated global
110 M. FRAUNDORFER
responses to global environmental challenges, can become more demo-

cratic through three major dynamics: (1) the ongoing implementation
and enforcement of human rights complemented by the expansion of
the community of rights holders to non-human animals and parts of
nature; (2) the creation of more participatory and inclusive governance
mechanisms, which actively involve civil society actors, particularly those
that have been marginalised and excluded from existing decision-making
processes for too long; (3) the establishment of accountability mecha-
nisms which would facilitate the activities of many civil society actors to
hold powerful states and private actors to account.
The promotion of human rights, non-human animal rights and right
of nature through networked forms of transnational solidarity together
with the creation of more participatory and inclusive governance mech-
anisms feeds directly into the creation of accountability mechanisms.
If these actions unfold in a co-constitutive and interdependent fashion
involving a multiplicity of state and non-state actors, they can potentially
promote democratic practices in global governance by limiting the abuse
of power by powerful governments and corporations and opening up
decision-making processes to those communities and social movements
whose voices are usually neglected. As a consequence, democratic prac-
tices can provide the necessary space for the unfolding of often novel
and sometimes radical governance models which are better equipped to
confront today’s global environmental challenges than conventional ones
(see Chapters 5–9).
3.5.3 Networks and Nodes in Global Governance

Global governance dynamics essentially unfold through networks and
nodes. As crucial nodes in the networks of global governance, reflexive
authorities represent the command centres of global governance,
providing platforms of cooperation and exchange for state and non-state
actors to devise responses to global environmental challenges. Simulta-
neously, (de)legitimation practices also emerge through networks and
their interconnected sets of nodes, giving government agencies, citizens,
NGOs, social movements and companies ample opportunities to organise
themselves across borders.
Through transnational advocacy networks, civil society actors form
global movements to exert pressure on states, advance a common
cause, promote democratic practices and (de)legitimate global governance
institutions. Government agencies organise in vertical and horizontal

government networks with their national counterparts in other coun-
tries and world regions. Private actors advance private certification and
labelling schemes through transnational regulatory networks. And multi-
stakeholder platforms unite global public policy (or multistakeholder)
networks, which bring together state and non-state actors in collective
decision-making processes.
As concentrations of power, nodes can reproduce already existing
power dynamics, neo-colonial relationships and dominant capitalist ideas
in global governance, thus exacerbating today’s global environmental
challenges. Cities, as major financial and economic nodes in the global
economy, illustrate this point. Some cities like New York, Geneva, Vienna,
Rome and Bonn disproportionately concentrate power and influence as
major hubs of global governance dynamics. At the same time, it is at the
interfaces of these highly influential nodes where change can take place,
ultimately leading to the transformation of global governance processes.
This can be achieved through the reform of international organisations as
vital governance nodes; the development of new nodes and nodal assem-
blages which carry new ideas; and change from within nodes, such as local
and citizen-focused action in cities that transform dominant economic
logics from the ground (see Chapters 5–8).
Questions
• How would you explain the reflexive and liquid nature of authority
in global governance to someone like Albert Einstein who envi-
sioned a supranational body with solid authority standing above
states?
• Discuss how citizens like you and me can engage in (de)legitimation
practices in global governance! Consider the example of Greta Thun-
berg! How has she engaged in delegitimation practices to question
and challenge the dominant dynamics of global governance?
• Discuss the role of democratic states in global governance. Have
their actions always contributed to more democratic practices
beyond and above the state? And how can civil society actors advance
more democratic global governance processes?
• Discuss the role of cities as major nodes of financial, economic
and trade flows in exacerbating global environmental challenges like
112 M. FRAUNDORFER
freshwater pollution, natural habitat loss, deforestation, CO2 emis-

sions and the spread of infectious diseases! How can cities become
transformative actors in tackling global environmental challenges?
• Debate to which extent the multiple consequences of the global
climate crisis are reshaping the meaning of democracy! Are author-
itarian governance models better suited to tackle global environ-
mental challenges?
References
Acosta, A. 2013. El buen vivir: Sumak Kawsay, una oportunidad para imaginar
otro mundo. Barcelona: Icaria.
Archibugi, D. 1993. The Reform of the UN and Cosmopolitan Democracy: A
Critical Review. Journal of Peace Research 30 (3): 301–335.
Archibugi, D., N. Urbinati, M. Zürn, R. Marchetti, T. Macdonald, and D.
Jacobs. 2010. Global Democracy: A Symposium on a New Political Hope.
New Political Science. 32 (1): 83–121.
Bäckstrand, K., and F. Söderbaum. 2018. Legitimation and Deligitimation in
Global Governance. Discursive, Institutional, and Behavioral Practices. In
Legitimacy in Global Governance: Sources, Processes, and Consequences, ed.
J. Tallberg, K. Bäckstrand, and J.A. Scholte, 101–118. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Benner, T., W.H. Reinicke, and J.M. Witte. 2005. Multisectoral Networks in
Global Governance: Towards a Pluralistic System of Accountability. In Global
Governance and Public Accountability, ed. D. Held and M. Koenig-Archibugi,
67–86. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bexell, M., J. Tallberg, and A. Uhlin. 2010. Democracy in Global Governance:
The Promises and Pitfalls of Transnational Actors. Global Governance: A
Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations 16 (1): 81–101.
Bradford, A. 2020. The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Braithwaite, J. 2004–2005. Methods of Power for Development: Weapons of
the Weak, Weapons of the Strong. Michigan Journal of International Law
26: 297–330.
Burris, S., P. Drahos, and C. Shearing. 2005. Nodal Governance. Australian
Journal of Legal Philosophy 30: 30–58.
Burris, S., M. Kempa, and C. Shearing. 2008. Changes in Governance: A Cross-
Disciplinary Review of Current Scholarship. Akron Law Review 41 (1): 1–66.
Castells, M. 2000a. Materials for an Exploratory Theory of the Network Society.
British Journal of Sociology 51 (1): 5–24.
Castells, M. 2000b. The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Castells, M. (ed.). 2004. The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective.
Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Castells, M. 2009. Communication Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cavalieri, P., and P. Singer (eds.). 1993. The Great Ape Project: Equality beyond
Humanity. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Cochrane, A. 2018. Sentientist Politics. A Theory of Global Inter-Species Justice.
Curtis, S. 2010. Global Cities and the Transformation of the International
System. Review of International Studies 37 (4): 1923–1947.
Dahl, R.A. 1999. Can International Organizations Be Democratic? A Skeptic’s
View. In Democracy’s Edges, ed. I. Shapiro and C. Hacker-Cordon, 19–36.
Dellmuth, L.M., J.A. Scholte, and J. Tallberg. 2019. Institutional Sources
of Legitimacy for International Organisations: Beyond Procedure versus
Performance. Review of International Studies 45: 627–646.
De Sousa Santos, B. 2006. The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum
and Beyond. London and New York: Zed Books.
Diamond, L. 1999. Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore,
MD: John Hopkins University Press.
Drahos, P. 2004. Intellectual Property and Pharmaceutical Markets: A Nodal
Governance Approach. Temple Law Review 77: 401–424.
Dryzek, J.S., and H. Stevenson. 2012. Democratizing Global Climate Gover-
nance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dupont, B. 2004. Security in the Age of Networks. Policing and Society 14 (1):
76–91.
Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, M. 2017. Global Governance Networks. In The Oxford
Handbook of Political Networks, ed. J.N. Victor, A.H. Montgomery, and M.
Lubell, 689–712. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Einsteinsommerhaus. n.d. Einstein in Caputh [Online]. Available from https://
www.einsteinsommerhaus.de/index.php?id=456&no_cache=1. Accessed 3
June 2021.
Florini, A. M. 2000. (ed.). The Third Force: The Rise of Transnational Civil
Society. Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange/Washington, DC:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Fraundorfer, M. 2015. Brazil’s Emerging Role in Global Governance: Health,
Food Security and Bioenergy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fraundorfer, M. 2018a. Rethinking Global Democracy in Brazil. London:
Fraundorfer, M. 2018b. The Rediscovery of Indigenous Thought in the Modern
Legal System: The Case of the Great Apes. Global Policy 9 (1): 17–25.
114 M. FRAUNDORFER
Goodhart, M. 2011. Democratic Accountability in Global Politics: Norms, Not

Agents. Journal of Politics 73 (1): 45–60.
Gould, C.C. 2007. Transnational Solidarities. Journal of Social Philosophy 38 (1):
148–164.
Gould, C.C. 2014. Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots of Global Justice.
Hein, W., and S. Moon. 2013. Informal Norms in Global Governance: Human
Rights, Intellectual Property Rules and Access to Medicines. Farnham: Ashgate.
Huppé, G., H. Creech, and D. Knoblauch. 2012. The Frontiers of
Networked Governance. International Institute for Sustainable Develop-
ment [Online]. International Institute for Sustainable Development. Avail-
able from https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/frontiers_networ
ked_gov.pdf. Accessed 3 June 2021.
Imber, M. 2006. The Reform of the UN Security Council. International
Relations 20 (3): 328–334.
Kaldor, M. 2003. The Idea of Global Civil Society. International Affairs 79 (3):
583–593.
Keck, M.E., and K. Sikkink. 1998. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks
in International Politics. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press.
Keck, M.E., and K. Sikkink. 1999. Transnational Advocacy Networks in Inter-
national and Regional Politics. International Social Science Journal 51 (159):
89–101.
Keohane, R.O. 2006. Accountability in World Politics. Scandinavian Political
Studies 29 (2): 75–87.
Krisch, N. 2017. Liquid Authority in Global Governance. International Theory
9 (2): 237–260.
Macdonald, T. 2008. Global Stakeholder Democracy: Power and Representation
beyond Liberal States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Madron, R., and J. Jopling. 2003. Gaian Democracies: Redefining Globalisation
and People-Power. Schumacher Briefings. Cambridge: UIT Cambridge.
Nash, R.F. 1989. The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics.
Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.
Rosenau, J.N. 2006. The Study of World Politic: Globalization and Governance,
vol. 2. New York: Routledge.
Rosenau, J.N. 2007. Governing the Ungovernable: The Challenge of a Global
Disaggregation of Authority. Regulation & Governance 1: 88–97.
Sassen, S. 1991. The Global City. New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Sassen, S. (ed.). 2002. Global Networks. Linked Cities. New York and London:
Routledge.
Sassen, S. 2005. The Global City: Introducing a Concept. Brown Journal of
World Affairs 11 (2): 27–43.
Scholte, J.A. 2004. Civil Society and Democratically Accountable Global Gover-
nance. Government & Opposition 39 (2): 211–233.
Scholte, J.A. (ed.). 2011. Building Global Democracy? Cambridge University
Press: Civil Society and Accountable Global Governance. Cambridge.
Scholte, J.A. 2018. Social Structure and Global Governance Legitimacy. In
Legitimacy in Global Governance: Sources, Processes, and Consequences, ed. J.
Tallberg, K. Bäckstrand, and J.A. Scholte, 75–98. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Scholte, J.A., and J. Tallberg. 2018. Theorizing the Institutional Sources of
Global Governance Legitimacy. In Legitimacy in Global Governance: Sources,
Processes, and Consequences, ed. J. Tallberg, K. Bäckstrand, and J.A. Scholte,
56–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shearing, C., and J. Wood. 2003. Nodal Governance, Democracy, and the New
Denizens. Journal of Law and Society 30 (3): 400–419.
Shiva, V. 2015. Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace. Berkley, CA:
North Atlantic Books.
Silberschmidt, G., D. Matheson, and I. Kickbusch. 2008. Creating a Committee
C of the World Health Assembly. The Lancet 371: 1483–1486.
Singer, Peter. 1995. Animal Liberation, 2nd ed. London: Pimlico.
Slaughter, A.-M. 2004. A New World Order. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Smith, D., and M. Timberlake. 2002. Hierarchies of Dominance among World
Cities: A Network Approach. In Global Networks, ed. S. Sassen, 117–144.
Linked Cities, New York and London: Routledge.
Smith, J. 2008. Social Movements for Global Democracy. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Stone, D. 2008. Global Public Policy, Transnational Policy Communities, and
Their Networks. The Policy Studies Journal 36 (1): 19–38.
Stone, C.D. 2010. Should Trees Have Standing? Law, Morality, and the Environ-
ment, 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tallberg, J., and A. Uhlin. 2012. Civil Society and Global Democracy: An Assess-
ment. In Global Democracy. Normative and Empirical Perspectives, ed. D.
Archibugi, M. Koenig-Archibugi, and R. Marchetti, 210–232. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Tallberg, J., K. Bäckstrand, and J. A. Scholte. 2018. Introduction: Legitimacy
in Global Governance. In Legitimacy in Global Governance. Sources, Processes,
and Consequences, ed. J. Tallberg, K. Bäckstrand, and J.A. Scholte, 3–19.
UNESCO. 1985. Why War? A Letter From Albert Einstein to Sigmund
Freud. UNESCO Courier [Online]. Available from https://en.unesco.org/
courier/may-1985/why-war-letter-albert-einstein-sigmund-freud. Accessed 3
June 2021.
116 M. FRAUNDORFER
Williams, I. 2011. Obama Will Rue his Lack of Principle on Palestine’s

Unesco Membership”. The Guardian, November 1. [Online]. Available
from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/
01/obama-palestine-unesco-membership. Accessed 10 June 2021.
Wood, J. 2006. Research and Innovation in the Field of Security: A Nodal Gover-
nance View. In Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security, ed. J. Wood
and B. Dupont, 217–240. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zelli, F. 2018. Effects of Legitimacy Crises in Complex Global Governance.
In Legitimacy in Global Governance. Sources, Processes, and Consequences,
ed. J. Tallberg, K. Bäckstrand, and J.A. Scholte, 169–188. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Zürn, M. 2017. From Constitutional Rule to Loosely Coupled Spheres of Liquid
Authority: A Reflexive Approach. International Theory 9 (2): 261–285.
Zürn, M. 2018. A Theory of Global Governance: Authority, Legitimacy &
Contestation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
CHAPTER 4
Global Governance of Infectious Disease

Outbreaks
4.1 Infectious Diseases in the Anthropocene

Infectious diseases have played a critical role in shaping and reshaping
human civilisations and changing the course of history (Price-Smith
2009). When the Spanish conquistadores introduced smallpox into the
Americas after 1492, they did not realise that this virus would become
their most powerful biological weapon in defeating, decimating and
eradicating indigenous societies and civilisations all across the continent
(Crosby 2003, 2004). Ecological changes in the Greater Caribbean occur-
ring from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century made this region
endemic for malaria and yellow fever, which once again proved to be
useful to the Spanish colonisers. Once yellow fever and malaria became
endemic in the region, it was extremely difficult for other colonisers from
Europe and North America, whose immune systems were unprepared for
these diseases, to establish themselves in the Greater Caribbean. These
diseases helped a declining Spanish Empire to hold on to their colonies
in the eighteenth century against increasingly powerful imperial rivals
(McNeill 2010).
Malaria was also endemic in Europe throughout the Middle Ages. The
cooling of temperatures during the Little Ice Age between the thirteenth
and early nineteenth century eradicated the virus from Europe north of
the Alps, and the Anopheles mosquito retreated to North Africa. While
the climatic changes of the Little Ice Age put an end to malaria in Europe,

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88156-6_4
118 M. FRAUNDORFER
cooling temperatures provided excellent conditions for the rapid spread of

other parasites. Fleas and lice prospered in thicker clothing and in societies
with poor personal hygiene, which caused numerous typhus outbreaks.
One of those flourishing parasites, the Yersinia Pestis flea, “travelled” in
the bodies and clothes of merchants and traders along the Silk Road,
which stretched from Central Asia to East Asia and Europe and became
known as the principal cause of the Plague, eradicating roughly 30 per
cent of Europe’s population (Behringer 2010, 85–109; Price-Smith 2009,
38). The Great Plague transformed European societies in the Middle Ages
like no other event, generating moral, social and sociopolitical disinte-
gration, eroding state and societal cohesion, accelerating the collapse of
agricultural productivity, undermining the feudal order and delegitimising
the power of the Catholic Church (Price-Smith 2009, 38–46). Good
personal hygiene and medical knowledge have made the Plague a threat
of the past. But due to global climate change and warming temperatures,
mosquitoes endemic in tropical countries, among them the Anopheles
mosquito, are slowly returning to Europe.
In human societies, infectious diseases were the principal cause of death
until the twentieth century. While 1796 marks the year the very first
successful vaccine was developed (the smallpox vaccine) (WHO 2016),
it would take another century to start a biomedical revolution that
would completely transform humanity’s view on infectious diseases—and
the impact those diseases have on human populations. In the 1870s
and 1880s, against the backdrop of significant technological improve-
ments of microscopes, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, independently
of each other, successfully isolated three pathogens responsible for major
infectious disease outbreaks (anthrax, tuberculosis and cholera) (see also
Box 4.1).
Box 4.1: Germ Theory

Since the biomedical breakthroughs of the nineteenth century, the domi-
nant understanding of how to tackle infectious diseases has been informed
by germ theory. Boosted by technological innovations and a better
understanding of different pathogens (viruses, bacteria, fungi, etc.), germ
theory exclusively focuses on the causal relationship between germs
(pathogens) and diseases, sidelining socio-economic, political and environ-
mental factors. This theory was crucially promoted by some of the most
4 GLOBAL GOVERNANCE OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE OUTBREAKS 119
famous bacteriologists and pathologists of the nineteenth century, such as

Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch.
Source Porta and Last (2018).
In the following decades, biomedical research would make unprece-

dented progress. Scientists established a causal relationship between
mosquito bites and the spread of diseases like malaria and yellow fever,
developed several medicines and vaccines against endemic diseases (diph-
theria, typhoid, tetanus, pertussis, yellow fever) and discovered and
mass-produced penicillin to treat bacterial infections, which until then
were a major cause of death in human populations (Lobanovska and Pilla
2017; Zacher and Keefe 2008, 5–7). In the late 1960s, vaccines against
measles, mumps, hepatitis, chickenpox and rubella followed (Zacher and
Keefe 2008, 8).
These biomedical innovations have enormously contributed to
unprecedented population growth and increased life expectancies world-
wide in the twentieth century. Despite these achievements and the near
eradication of many previously endemic infectious diseases in Europe,
the vast majority of those who die from infectious diseases today live in
the developing world. But in times of profound political, economic and
social interdependencies among all countries and world regions, infectious
diseases can travel quickly across the globe. This way, infectious diseases,
which in the past were confined to particular countries or regions, can
rapidly turn into global risks.
HIV/AIDS is one such example. Since its appearance in the 1980s
in the US, the HI-Virus has infected more than 77 million people
worldwide, and 35 million people have died (UNAIDS 2021). But the
HI-Virus (a mutated version of a chimpanzee virus) has a much longer
history. Its origins can be traced back to an epidemic in Kinshasa (previ-
ously Léopoldville) in the 1920s. An unhealthy mix of rapid population
growth, the use of unsterilised needles, the booming sex trade and, most
importantly, river and railway transport routes connecting Kinshasa with
other regions in Sub-Saharan Africa, was responsible for the spread of
the disease and its transformation into the deadliest pandemic of the late
twentieth century (Faria et al. 2014).
Over the last one hundred years, human societies have substantially
altered the planet’s microbial biogeography on a global scale through
the globalised agricultural practices of big industry as well as the global
120 M. FRAUNDORFER
flows of waste disposal, tourism, transport and animal trade (Zhu et al.
2017, 2018). Through these globalised activities, humans have dispersed
microorganisms across the planet, with unpredictable consequences for
microbial evolution and the development of antimicrobial resistance
(Gillings and Paulsen 2014; Zhu et al. 2018). In the Anthropocene, we
are increasingly confronted with so-called zoonotic diseases (infectious
diseases caused by a pathogen, such as a virus, bacterium or fungus, that
has jumped from animals to humans) as major global risks. HIV/AIDS
started as a zoonotic disease when it was first transmitted from chim-
panzees to humans. Other viruses that can spread from animals to humans
are influenza viruses and coronaviruses.
The influenza H1N1 virus, commonly called swine flu because of its
spread from pigs to humans, was associated with two global pandemics:
the 1918–1920 pandemic influenza (also commonly known as the Spanish
Flu) and the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 (Abeysinghe 2015). The 1918–
1920 pandemic influenza killed roughly 50 million people worldwide,
facilitated by the movement of soldiers across countries and continents in
the wake of the First World War (Johnson and Mueller 2002). By compar-
ison, roughly 10 million soldiers and 10 million civilians succumbed to
the mass slaughtering of the First World War (Mougel 2011, 1). The
impact of the 1918–1920 pandemic influenza in Europe was so severe
that it played a major role in shaping the outcome of the First World War.
Given its devastating impact on soldiers and fighting armies in Europe in
1918, the pandemic may have accelerated the wearing out of the war
effort of all parties involved, particularly the German and Austrian armies
(Price-Smith 2009, 76–78).
The 2009 H1N1 pandemic, which spread to almost all countries
worldwide, killed an estimated 18,000 people (WHO 2010). Since
2009, repeated H1N1 outbreaks occurred in different world regions,
but the outbreaks remained regionally confined: 2015 in India, 2017 in
the Maldives and Myanmar, 2017/18 in Pakistan, 2019 in Malta and
Morocco.
The influenza virus H5N1, commonly called avian flu because of
its transmission from birds to humans, has become another concern in
the twenty-first century. While known since the nineteenth century, the
H5N1 virus jumped to humans for the first time in 1997 in Hong Kong.
Since 2003, avian flu outbreaks have occurred on an annual basis with
hot spots in East and Southeast Asia and North Africa (Lai et al. 2016;
Lee and Fidler 2007). Given our enhanced biomedical knowledge and
a complex global health infrastructure to contain influenza epidemics,

the recurring influenza outbreaks of the past thirty years have been far
less devastating for humans than the notorious 1918–1920 pandemic
influenza. Although not one year goes by without a new avian influenza
outbreak, no more than 907 human cases were detected between 1997
and 2015 (Lai et al. 2016). And yet, the virus strain has become endemic
in some poultry populations, and avian flu epidemics regularly lead to the
mass culling of vast poultry populations (or the mass culling of pigs in the
case of swine flu epidemics).
In the late 1990s, 129 human cases of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease were
detected across Europe and the world, with origins in the UK. The disease
was transmitted to humans by cows that suffered from bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease). Those cows were infected by
being fed meat-and-bone meals containing the remains of infected sheep.
The disease was then further transmitted to humans through the human
consumption of the beef produced from those infected cows (Price-Smith
2009, 117). The disease had a mild impact on humans but a severe
impact on cattle herds across Europe, involving the culling of hundreds
of thousands of cows.
Infectious diseases also affect entire ecosystems. One example is the
amphibian disease chytridiomycosis. The disease has been responsible for
the decline or extinction of 501 amphibian species worldwide (approxi-
mately 6.5 per cent of all amphibians recorded). Transmitted by a fungus,
the global spread of the disease was facilitated by humans through the
global trade of live amphibians (Greenberg and Palen 2019; Scheele et al.
2019). Hence, our anthropogenic impact on the planet’s biosphere is
expressed in how we carry pathogens like bacteria, fungi and viruses
across the globe, unintentionally introducing them into new habitats and
contributing to genetic mutations and new resistances that accelerate the
mass extinction of species and the rapid loss of biodiversity.
This interactive process is compounded by another time bomb,
creating a perfect storm for infectious diseases in the Anthropocene (see
Box 4.2). The melting of permafrost soils and polar ice caps may release
ancient pathogens (viruses, bacteria and other microorganisms that can
cause disease), which have been frozen for thousands of years, into the
water, soil and food supply; pathogens which could easily infect us or
other species due to lacking or weak immunity (Gross 2019). Other
climate effects will also profoundly impact microbial environments, the
dynamics of pathogen transmission, the burden of viral infections and
122 M. FRAUNDORFER
changes in antimicrobial resistance. The accelerating processes of defor-

estation and the loss of the last remaining rainforests and other pristine
ecosystems will further increase the exposure of humans to wild animals
and make transmissions of zoonotic pathogens ever more frequent. The
COVID-19 pandemic is a case in point (see Case Study 3). Warming
temperatures will facilitate the spread of a long list of pathogens and
vectors among them the Cholera bacillus, the Aedes Aegypti mosquito
responsible, for example, for the transmission of dengue and zika, and
the Anopheles mosquito responsible for the transmission of malaria
(Price-Smith 2002, 141–160).
Box 4.2: COVID-19 as a Hyperobject

Given their global and planetary ramifications, infectious disease outbreaks
and pandemics can be understood as hyperobjects. The COVID-19
pandemic is only the latest example of such a hyperobject, as described
by literary theorist Serenella Iovino:
It is a ‘massive thing’ constituted by the sum total of all the coronaviruses

hidden in the body of each individual person, bat, pangolin, or wild animal.
It dwells in the globe’s forests and hospitals, Asian wet markets and scien-
tific labs, saliva droplets and particulate matter that act as viral carriers. Its
temporality is also multiple: it’s the slow time of evolution and the fast
time of multiplying cells, the time of quiescence and the time of conta-
gion, the time of illness and that of immunity. Finally, this hyperobject also
contains its causes and effects: destroyed habitats, shrinking biodiversity,
decades of neoliberal economy, the industrial, commercial, and biopolitical
maps of globalization, locked-down cities, solitary deaths, billions of irre-
trievably lost hugs. In this entangled web, ‘here’ and ‘there’ are closer than
they appear, and the present always already overlaps with the future.
Source Iovino (2020).
Not only will climatic changes and accelerating environmental degra-

dation create the perfect breeding ground for pathogens and mosquitoes
to grow and flourish. The twenty-first century will also provide the ideal
environment for pathogens to spread across the globe within ever shorter
periods of time due to globalised travel and transport systems, cities
highly integrated into the transboundary flows of the global economy,
and rapidly growing and expanding urban areas (see Case Study 1). In
other words, ongoing climatic changes risk exacerbating the emergence
and spread of new pathogens and infectious diseases (and the sudden
re-emergence of a host of already well-known pathogens and diseases),

putting additional pressure on global health governance.
Scientists are only beginning to understand what these incisive envi-
ronmental changes will mean for the future of infectious diseases and
pandemic preparedness (Hutchins et al. 2019). But one thing can be
taken for granted. Despite huge biomedical achievements in under-
standing and containing the spread of infectious diseases throughout the
twentieth century, infectious disease outbreaks and pandemics will remain
among the most urgent global challenges in the Anthropocene.
4.2 Infectious Diseases and the Global

Health Governance Architecture
Infectious diseases have a history of dividing and unifying people and
communities. Infectious disease outbreaks can easily divide communities,
spelling fear and terror in the face of insufficient knowledge about its
origins, a lacking vaccine or other treatment, and the fast and uncon-
trolled spread of the disease. Infectious diseases have historically fright-
ened human societies so much that, ironically, fear and panic usually travel
much faster than the virus itself during an infectious disease outbreak.
At the same time, infectious diseases have historically proven to unify
communities like almost no other transboundary threat. Records about
measures to contain epidemics go back to the Middle Ages when the
recurrent waves of the Plague forced city-states to respond.
In the late 1300s, the city-state of Florence introduced what would
become one of the most traditional approaches to infectious disease
containment: the use of the military to (re)establish social order and
set up military cordons sanitaires (sanitary cordons) to seal off a specific
region or area along with its population (Price-Smith 2009, 44). In 1348,
Venice was the first city to use maritime quarantine measures to isolate
incoming ships and their crew for forty days before they were allowed
to enter the port (MacLehose et al. 2002; Price-Smith 2009, 43). The
city-state of Dubrovnik on the Adriatic Sea passed into history as the first
city to develop quarantine legislation in 1377 and set up a permanent
health office in 1390 to contain the Plague (Blažina-Tomić 2015). North
Italian city-states, such as Venice, Florence and Milan, set up public health
commissions monitoring the public health situation (Price-Smith 2009,
43).
124 M. FRAUNDORFER
It would, however, take until the nineteenth century before more

complex mechanisms of cooperation emerged. Increasing economic,
political and cultural interdependencies among European powers in the
nineteenth century in the form of intensified trade, travel and transport
forced European governments to cooperate through fourteen Interna-
tional Sanitary Conferences (between 1851 and 1938), find ways to
harmonise maritime quarantine legislation and control the most urgent
epidemics of the day, particularly cholera, the Plague and yellow fever
(Zacher and Keefe 2008, 27).
At the sanitary conference in 1903, European powers agreed to estab-
lish the first permanent international health bureau, following the decision
of the American republics to set up an international sanitary bureau for
the Americas one year earlier in response to a yellow fever epidemic in
South America (Encyclopædia Britannica 2010; WHO 2021a). This inter-
national sanitary bureau would earn its name as the oldest regional health
organisation in the international system, renamed after the Second World
War as the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO) (Encyclopædia
Britannica 2010).
It would still take until 1907 for the first permanent international
health bureau, Office International d’Hygiène Publique (OIHP), to be
finally established in Paris to monitor the emergence and spread of
diseases (Kamradt-Scott 2015, 25; WHO 2021a). With the creation of
the League of Nations after the First World War, the League of Nations
Health Organisation (LNHO) came into existence. While it was intended
to fuse this new organisation with the OIHP, the US, which was a
member of the OIHP but not the League of Nations, vetoed this plan
so that in the inter-war years two independent international health organ-
isations (the OIHP and the LNHO) existed along with the Pan-American
Sanitary Organisation (WHO 2021a).
The end of the Second World War released new energy in interna-
tional health cooperation to build the foundational pillars of today’s
global health governance system. In 1948, the World Health Organi-
sation became the successor organisation to the Paris-based OIHP and
the short-lived League of Nations Health Organisation (LNHO) to act
as the principal coordinating authority on international health cooper-
ation (WHO 2021a). In 1951, the International Sanitary Regulations
finally achieved what had been started one hundred years ago, in 1851,
through the international sanitary conferences: the establishment of a set
of standards and a framework of cooperation for a coordinated response

to infectious disease outbreaks (Kamradt-Scott 2015, 29).
In 1952, Sir Arthur MacNalty, a renowned medical expert at the
time, commented on the adoption of the International Sanitary Regu-
lations: “[w]hen all the governments of the world adopt the Regulations
and implement them, they will protect not only their own frontiers
from pestilence, but will also materially contribute to the health of all
nations” (MacNalty 1952, 1108). A great step forward in international
health cooperation it certainly was. But it took one hundred years and
two world wars to make this step possible. And when considering that
the first quarantine legislation (that is, rules on how to confront infec-
tious disease) was developed in the fourteenth century, it is sobering
to realise that it would take another six hundred years before national
governments ultimately adopted an international legal framework on
infectious disease control. Since the fourteenth century, the major bone
of contention among governments has revolved around the compatibility
of two paradigms: on the one hand, controlling infectious diseases and,
on the other hand, avoiding restrictions on international trade. Britain,
for example, the leading maritime power of the nineteenth century, was
strongly opposed to the international sanitary conferences because of the
disruptive impact any international sanitary framework might have had
on international trade and Britain’s national interest (Zacher and Keefe
2008, 27).
The International Sanitary Regulations strengthened the WHO’s tech-
nical authority in that member states were required to share information
on disease outbreaks as a vital precondition to confronting the trans-
boundary spread of diseases (Kamradt-Scott 2015, 30). In the end, the
Sanitary Regulations were unanimously approved in the World Health
Assembly because they did not significantly interfere with international
trade, the primary concern of leading powers. Instead, the control
of infectious diseases was to be improved through monitoring and
surveillance functions carried out by the WHO, the first international
health organisation with universal membership. To this end, the Global
Influenza Surveillance Network was launched in 1952, which played
an essential role in detecting the two major influenza epidemics of the
second half of the twentieth century: in 1957, the H2N2 influenza virus
spreading from China across the world with 2 million fatalities; and
in 1968 the H3N2 influenza virus spreading from Hong Kong with
126 M. FRAUNDORFER
1 million fatalities (Lee and Fidler 2007, 217; Tognotti 2013, 257–
258). Then, in 1968 the International Sanitary Regulations were revised
and became the International Health Regulations, which continue today
as the central international mechanism to coordinate an international
health response to infectious disease outbreaks and international health
emergencies.
Despite all these important steps forward, a genuine global health
governance architecture did not exist until the 1980s, nor did govern-
ments invest in improving existing cooperation mechanisms (Zacher and
Keefe 2008, 40). Like its predecessor organisations, the WHO continued
to struggle with its member states, which regularly underreported cases or
did not comply with the principles of the International Sanitary Regula-
tions out of fear for undermining their economic interests (Kamradt-Scott
2015, 29). This situation only changed markedly in the 1980s owing to
a confluence of factors, such as the spread of HIV/AIDS, the arrival of
the internet and the end of the Cold War.
HIV/AIDS, like other major infectious diseases before, proved to be a
principal catalyst for international health cooperation. Interlinked with the
geopolitical and technological developments of the 1990s (the fall of the
Soviet Union and the onset of the digital revolution), health cooperation
ushered into a new era.
The technological innovations of the internet revolutionised the moni-
toring and surveillance capacities of the WHO. In 1994, ProMED, the
Programme for Monitoring Emerging Diseases, was called into life by
the Federation of American Scientists before its operation was assumed
by the International Society for Infectious Diseases in 1999. ProMED
is an internet-based reporting system providing instant and 24-hour
monitoring of the emergence and spread of infectious diseases affecting
humans, non-human animals and plants. Whereas before the 1990s, the
WHO had been entirely dependent on governments’ willingness to share
information on emerging diseases and disease outbreaks, the internet
completely changed the game (Zacher and Keefe 2008, 43–49). Ever
since ProMED, internet-based networks have made it possible for jour-
nalists, local observers, scientists, hospitals, NGOs and others across the
world to share information about disease outbreaks in different languages
through several interconnected regional networks (International Society
for Infectious Diseases 2010).
In 1997, the Canadian government and the WHO set up the Global
Public Health Intelligence Network to monitor media sources worldwide
on emerging diseases and disease outbreaks, food and water contam-

ination, bioterrorism, chemical contamination and the safety of drugs
and medical services. While this network is government-administered (in
contrast to ProMED), it has taken advantage of the benefits of digital
technologies to provide a 24/7 global monitoring service. The network
analyses and processes more than 3000 news reports daily in several
languages (Dion et al. 2015).
In 2000, the WHO called into life the Global Outbreak Alert and
Response Network (GOARN), a global network of over 240 tech-
nical institutions and networks from more than 75 countries. The
system collects information and coordinates global responses to disease
outbreaks, involving networks of laboratories, UN organisations, NGOs
and field experts to tackle disease outbreaks on the ground (GOARN
2020). In 2006, the WHO, the FAO and the OIE (World Organisation
for Animal Health) launched the Joint FAO-OIE-WHO Global Early
Warning System for Health Risks and Emerging Risks at the Human-
Animal-Ecosystems Interface. This system shares information about the
interrelated risks of the global food system and food chains, the emer-
gence of zoonotic diseases and their potential spread to humans. Through
its cross-sectoral approach, this network acknowledges the close intercon-
nection between global food production, animal health, public health,
food security and emerging infectious diseases with zoonotic origin
(GLEWS, n.d.).
This networked and multi-actor approach to infectious disease
outbreaks has become a new norm in global health governance. Since
the late 1990s, a sizeable group of global partnerships has sprung up to
accelerate the research and development process on infectious diseases,
reduce prices of medicines and globally distribute medicines and diag-
nosis material, particularly among affected populations in the global
south. These partnerships include governments, NGOs, pharmaceutical
companies, philanthropic foundations, research institutes, laboratories,
universities and patient organisations. The Medicines for Malaria Venture
(MMV) has significantly contributed to a renewed emphasis on the global
fight against malaria, boosting research and the development for new
malaria drugs. The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) has
catalysed attention on various neglected diseases in developing countries,
such as leishmaniasis, Chagas disease and sleeping sickness. The work
of the TB Alliance has contributed to the establishment of the largest
pipeline of drugs for tuberculosis in history. The GAVI Alliance was set
128 M. FRAUNDORFER
up as a global vaccine alliance to increase global vaccine coverage and

boost children’s access to vaccines for diseases like measles, rubella, diph-
theria, tetanus and pertussis, hepatitis B, rotavirus and others; vaccines for
diseases easily accessible in developed countries with functioning public
health systems but difficult to get access to in developing countries with
precarious public health systems.
The following three case studies provide a brief overview of global
health responses to three major infectious disease outbreaks in the twenty-
first century: the SARS outbreak in China in 2002 as the first global
pandemic of the twenty-first century, the Ebola outbreak in Western
Africa in 2014 as the worst Ebola outbreak in history and the COVID-19
outbreak in China in late 2019 as the worst global pandemic in the early
twenty-first century.
4.3 Responding to Pandemics

in the Twenty-First Century
4.3.1 CASE STUDY 1: SARS—Bending and Twisting
the State-Centric Logic
4.3.1.1 The Virus
The coronavirus (SARS-CoV) responsible for the SARS (Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak was probably transmitted to humans by
bats in the Guangdong province of southern China at some point in 2002
(WHO 2021b). Given its famous “wet markets”, where live animals are
offered for sale and humans are in close contact with wild animals, this
region is a hot spot for infectious disease outbreaks and the transmission
of animal viruses to humans, as in the case of the H5N1 (avian flu) virus
(Fidler 2004b, 72). A viral respiratory disease, SARS was first mistaken for
another H5N1 (avian flu) virus outbreak. Only when the virus had spread
via Hong Kong to other countries in Asia and worldwide, it dawned on
medical experts that the world was confronting an entirely new virus. And
no vaccine or medicine existed to tackle this virus—the ultimate horror
scenario for infectious disease experts.
Compared with previous pandemics, the fatality rate from SARS was
very low. Between 1 November 2002, the first outbreak, and the end
of July 2003, when the pandemic was finally dying down, 8096 cases
were officially reported, including a mere 774 fatalities (WHO 2003a).
What made the pandemic so frightening was that a completely unknown
virus spread to countries in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North
America within a matter of days and weeks through those global trans-
port routes, hubs and nodes that characterise our globalised world in the
twenty-first century. In other words, the spread of SARS came to epito-
mise for the very first time how easily a local infectious disease outbreak
could turn into a global threat within a matter of days, affecting soci-
eties and countries thousands of kilometres away from the original disease
outbreak.
4.3.1.2 Transnational Monitoring and Surveillance Networks

SARS also symbolised how easily viruses could spread globally through
the position of some cities as strategic and highly connected nodes in
the globalised system, poignantly exemplified by Hong Kong. Since the
nineteenth century, Hong Kong has been one of the world’s major cargo
and shipping hubs. Today, Hong Kong is also one of the busiest airport
hubs in the world; a leading financial centre integrated into global finan-
cial and economic flows and one of the ultimate transit gateways in Asia
used by thousands of people worldwide to connect to neighbouring coun-
tries in Asia and other world regions. SARS became a global event on
21 February 2003 when a Chinese doctor infected by SARS checked
into room 911 on the ninth floor of the Metropole Hotel in Hong
Kong for a one-night stay. He had travelled to Hong Kong from Guang-
dong Province in mainland China where he had treated patients with an
unknown respiratory illness, later to be known as SARS. During his one-
night stay, the feverish Chinese doctor infected other hotel guests on the
ninth floor who would carry the virus far and wide (Fidler 2004b, 1). In
the following days, the virus hitchhiked in the bodies of feverish business-
people and travellers to hotels and airports in other countries, infecting
hotel guests, flight passengers and hospital staff (Zhou and Coleman
2016, 290).
The WHO developed a first sense of what was going on in China
through its virtual surveillance networks. On 27 November 2002, the
WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) picked
up an incoherent shred of information about a new influenza outbreak
in mainland China. Only translated into English in January 2003, the
message got lost in the cacophony of daily news messages; even more
so because it did not point to a new disease (Fidler 2004b, 73–74; Zhou
and Coleman 2016, 292). On 10 February 2003, the ProMED reporting
130 M. FRAUNDORFER
system filtered intriguing local media messages about a serious new flu
disease in mainland China despite the Chinese government’s silence on
any potential disease outbreaks within its territory (Fidler 2004b, 74).
First mistaken for another flu epidemic, it would take the WHO until
March 2003 to confirm that the world was dealing with a completely
new virus after more and more countries had been reporting cases of
a severe atypical respiratory illness and the WHO’s virtual reporting
systems had been picking up an increasing number of messages around
the world that confirmed these cases and pointed to the emergence of
a new pandemic (Fidler 2004b, 77–80). On 15 March 2003, the WHO
published an update on suspected cases and deaths following this new
disease. Among those countries on the list with confirmed and uncon-
firmed cases (Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Canada, the
Philippines, Indonesia, Germany), one country was suspiciously missing:
China. And yet, all the information available to the WHO through global
surveillance networks and WHO member states’ reporting pointed to
Guangdong Province in mainland China as the only possible source of
origin (Fidler 2004b, 80). What was happening here?
4.3.1.3 China’s Westphalian Mentality

As a newly emerging infectious disease, SARS did not fall under the
diseases included in the International Health Regulations. Thus, under
international law WHO member states were not required to report case
rates of SARS to the WHO. In theory, at least! As the outbreak turned
into a pandemic, all states (and Chinese territories like Hong Kong)
voluntarily shared case reports with the WHO and updated the WHO
on ongoing developments—with one exception: the Chinese government
(Fidler 2004a, 801). From the beginning of the outbreak in November
2002, the Chinese government desperately tried to suppress all informa-
tion related to the outbreak of a new infectious disease in Guangdong
Province. But the global surveillance networks the WHO relied on for
up-to-date information on the spread of infectious diseases turned China’s
strategy upside down (Fidler 2003, 491).
China’s behaviour of censorship and cover-up has a long tradi-
tion in international health politics. Since its creation, the WHO (as
its predecessors) has fought against government attitudes of underre-
porting and lacking political will to share epidemiological information
on diseases within a country’s territory. Governments’ concerns about
economic harm and trade disruptions as a consequence of infectious
disease outbreaks were an important reason why it took one hundred

years to finally adopt a common framework that specified how to react
to infectious disease outbreaks. Indeed, this concern had been the major
bone of contention since the first International Sanitary Conference in
1851. The WHO’s ultimate dependence on governments’ willingness
to collaborate represented one of the major obstacles in the interna-
tional health politics of the twentieth century to tackle disease outbreaks
effectively.
This Westphalian mentality of the priority of the state ran into difficul-
ties with the emergence of global surveillance networks, which retrieved
their information from a host of sources that any state is incapable of
censoring or suppressing completely (NGOs, media outlets, hospitals,
local mobile phone and internet messaging). These global surveillance
networks eroded the state’s monopoly on information flows and made
the WHO much more independent in collecting and gathering epidemi-
ological information about disease outbreaks. The Chinese government
had completely underestimated this new transnational reality, and it was
now the WHO calling the shots and heaping increasing pressure on China
to change course.
4.3.1.4 The Boosted International Authority of the WHO

After the Chinese government realised that its censorship had failed in
the face of overwhelming information pointing to Guangdong Province
as the origin of the disease, the authorities still tried to maintain control:
they acknowledged the existence of an outbreak but remained silent on
its extent. Meanwhile, the virus was spreading to Hong Kong, Vietnam,
Singapore and Canada (Fidler 2003, 491). Encouraged by the unprece-
dented support of all other states and invigorated by the novelty of the
disease and its unpredictable consequences, the WHO stepped up its
activities, challenging the Chinese government and putting itself in the
position of a supranational institution acting above governments.
According to its constitution, the WHO is mandated to serve its
member states by providing a platform to share epidemiological informa-
tion and coordinate international responses to infectious disease outbreaks
(Fidler 2004b, 137, 143). During the SARS crisis, the WHO went much
beyond its originally defined authority by issuing a set of travel advi-
sories and recommendations without seeking approval from its member
states. On 12 March 2003, for example, the WHO issued a global alert
of atypical pneumonia and, three days later, an emergency travel advisory
132 M. FRAUNDORFER
directed towards travellers, airline crew and airlines (Fidler 2003, 491;
WHO 2003b). The travel advisory informed about the symptoms, such as
high fever and respiratory problems. It recommended that “[a]ny traveller
who develops these symptoms is advised not to undertake further travel
until they have recovered” (WHO 2003b). Before the SARS crisis, travel
advisories restricting travel and trade were usually left to the discretion
of WHO member states. Not only did the WHO issue a travel advisory
without the explicit authorisation of its member states; the organisation
also circumvented its member states by directly addressing travellers and
airlines (Fidler 2004b, 137–140).
The Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network further boosted
the WHO’s authority during the crisis. Through its globally spanning
network of laboratories, physicians and clinicians, one of the network’s
laboratories announced on 12 April 2003 that it had isolated the virus.
This success helped other laboratories and clinicians in the network to
define and finally name the disease as “SARS” and develop control guide-
lines (Zhou and Coleman 2016, 294–295). On 18 April, the Chinese
government gave up its uncooperative attitude and joined in the global
fight against SARS (Fidler 2003, 491).
An international organisation is only as strong as its member states
want it to be. Rather than acting as autonomous actors, international
organisations depend on their member states to circumscribe and define
the organisation’s room for manoeuvre. New technologies and organising
principles accompanied by the emergence of an unprecedented infec-
tious disease with unpredictable consequences, spreading quickly across
the globe, changed the dynamics of international health governance and
marked the beginning of global health governance in infectious disease
control. Therefore, global health expert David Fidler also called the SARS
virus the “first post-Westphalian pathogen” (Fidler 2003).
Like no other infectious disease before, SARS made it crystal-clear how
fast an unknown virus could spread around the world, transforming the
strengths of the global economy (highly integrated cities, airport hubs,
global transport flows) into its major weaknesses. After SARS arrived in
Hong Kong, it only took an additional two days before the virus was
detected 12,000 kilometres away in Toronto. In the same vein, the virus
spread conveniently along global transport flows connecting cities like
Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, Toronto, Bangkok and Taipei, which are
central hot spots in the global economy (and were those hardest hit by
the virus). In other words, the virus could have easily spread to Frankfurt
(where an infected passenger was quarantined at the airport), London,

Paris, New York or São Paulo (Zhou and Coleman 2016, 289–290).
New global surveillance networks like ProMED or GOARN provided
the WHO with an entirely new set of possibilities in gathering and
collecting epidemiological information about disease outbreaks. No
longer exclusively relying on its member states, the WHO could hunt
down disease outbreaks in real time, relying on a vast amount of informa-
tion and actors that were beyond the control of the state. Thus, the possi-
bilities of new information technologies like emails, 24/7 reporting and
instant global communication were “able to challenge the nation-state
monopoly on the control of time and thus space” (Zhou and Coleman
2016, 295). Suddenly, “the Westphalian pattern of non-reporting” (Fidler
2004b, 134) infectious diseases, a hallmark of international health poli-
tics since its very origins, became a liability. In times where unknown (and
potentially lethal) viruses can spread with such speed, potentially affecting
every single country on the planet, the Westphalian approach insisting on
the inviolability of state borders and state sovereignty has turned into a
threat to state interests. Instead, all states (except for China) realised that
their national and economic interests could only be guaranteed through
the enhanced authority of international and global action embodied by
the WHO and global surveillance networks.
The countries affected by SARS were in the unprecedented situa-
tion to respond to the crisis simultaneously despite significant differences
in economic, political, social and technological capacities (Zhou and
Coleman 2016, 291). This novel situation rendered any Westphalian logic
obsolete. Any state or group of states acting on their own would have
been easily outmanoeuvred by the virus, turning them into a threat to
international security. The Chinese government’s behaviour at the begin-
ning of the SARS crisis is a vivid example of how its Westphalian attitude
of non-reporting backfired.
4.3.1.5 The Resilience of the Westphalian Order

While SARS left its mark on global health governance, it did not leave a
trail of death and devastation in its wake. In terms of fatalities, SARS did
not even remotely equal the devastation caused by the HI-Virus, a new
and unknown virus in the early 1980s, which also spread quickly across
the world. And yet, the SARS crisis was characterised by uncertainty, fear
and panic stimulated by speculative and exaggerated international mass
media reports, intensified border controls and quarantine at airports, as
134 M. FRAUNDORFER
well as a lack of basic information about the virus. The SARS crisis proved
to be extremely damaging to the economies of those countries and terri-
tories affected, particularly the tourism sector. And yet, the urgency of the
global challenge of SARS made states aware of the importance of global
responses coordinated and led by international authorities like the WHO
as the only way to move forward.
But despite governments’ recognition of this new reality, it is intriguing
to note that the WHO’s increased international authority during the
SARS crisis did not translate into a more influential role of the organ-
isation in the revised International Health Regulations two years later.
In the revision, the WHO was bestowed the authority to determine
whether a particular event constitutes a “public health emergency of
international concern”, allowing the organisation to issue non-binding
temporary recommendations on trade and travel restrictions to contain
the disease outbreak. But even under the revised IHRs, their ultimate
success depends on member states’ willingness to accept the WHO’s
authority and follow its recommendations (WHO 2005). The WHO’s
exceptional authoritative role during the SARS crisis was a one-time event
that could temporarily bend and twist the Westphalian logic—but not
more than that.
4.3.2 CASE STUDY 2: EBOLA—Refracting Deep-Seated Structures

of Inequality and Injustice
4.3.2.1 The Virus
The Ebola virus has been known for decades. First discovered in 1976
in what was then Zaire (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo),
the virus is transmitted from primates and bats to humans and has led to
more than twenty outbreaks in different African countries (WHO 2021c;
Zhang and Wang 2014, 762). Until the most serious Ebola outbreak in
history in 2014, Ebola disease outbreaks had killed about 2400 people
in 12 African countries (Zhang and Wang 2014, 763). For almost forty
years, this extremely rare and lethal virus had been confined to the African
continent. This reality abruptly changed in 2014, when an Ebola disease
outbreak in the West African country of Guinea quickly spread to its
neighbouring countries Liberia and Sierra Leone and then, through inter-
national travellers and infected health care workers, to Europe and North
America. Between 2014 and 2016, this Ebola disease outbreak, which at
the beginning was taken for just another locally confined outbreak, would
spiral into the most severe Ebola outbreak in history, transforming Ebola
into a truly global threat.
4.3.2.2 Ebola and Its Various Meanings

In 2014, the Ebola virus killed four times more people than all previous
Ebola outbreaks together (Reardon 2014, 520). In the two years of the
epidemic, the virus infected more than 28,000 people in Guinea, Liberia
and Sierra Leone, killing more than 11,000 people (WHO 2021c). It is
suspected that environmental degradation lies at the root of the disease
outbreak. The index case of animal-to-human transmission, which started
the outbreak, occurred in a village in Guinea located in what is known as
the Forest Region, where more than 80 per cent of the forest had been
lost. This massive scale of deforestation increased the contact between
wild animals and human settlements and made it easier for the virus to
jump to humans (WHO 2015). Depending on its four virus strains, Ebola
has a fatality rate of up to 90 per cent. Since no treatment, medicine
or vaccine existed until 2016, except for the establishment of age-old
measures like quarantine and sanitary cordons, the outbreak prepared the
perfect breeding ground for the spread of panic, fear and terror on a
global scale.
And the outbreak was dominantly narrated as such in many Western
media outlets. Drawing on established disease outbreak narratives in
popular fiction, media narratives on the Ebola outbreak became an inter-
national spectacle, permeated with sensationalist reports and dramatic
hyperbole. Instead of taking seriously the plight of thousands of Africans
affected by the outbreak, Western media reports largely used the Ebola
crisis as a lens to discuss the potential impact on the West. The
Ebola outbreak was portrayed through a neocolonial lens as a horrible
disease from the dark African continent, threatening the civilised world
(Abeysinghe 2016; Nunes 2016, 551–552; Wald 2008).
The WHO bought into this frame by defining the Ebola outbreak as an
“emerging infectious disease” and a global risk despite the long history of
Ebola disease outbreaks (Nunes 2016, 549). Hence, the disease outbreak
was framed as a global security risk. While the disease outbreak indeed
constituted a security risk for the three West African countries, this was
not what the media, the WHO and the global health response had in
mind. Instead, Ebola constituted a security risk to the West and the global
flows of trade and commerce deriving from an African problem that could
spill from the underdeveloped continent to the developed world (Nunes
136 M. FRAUNDORFER
2016, 550–551). Global health actors largely obscured deeply entrenched

problems of global injustice between the developed and the developing
world, the detrimental impact of post-colonial legacies in Africa or the
persistent vulnerability of those people affected (Nunes 2016, 549–551).
Sierra Leone, for example, the country most hit by the epidemic with over
14,000 cases, chronically suffers from a precarious and, in some areas,
non-existent public health infrastructure, pervasive political corruption
and society’s deep distrust in public authorities (Anderson and Beresford
2016; WHO 2021c).
While the Ebola virus is highly contagious and lethal, it is not trans-
mitted through the air (like influenza or coronaviruses). Hence, any
society with a functioning and well-organised (public) health system can
potentially cope with this threat. After all, the virus did not wreak havoc
beyond the epicentre of Western Africa. Carried to Europe (the UK, Spain
and Italy) and North America (the US) through travellers and health
care workers, in the so-called developed world of the West a mere seven
people were infected, and just one person died (WHO 2021c). African
countries with high poverty rates, lack of education, deficient and often
absent public health infrastructures and insufficient basic medical knowl-
edge about the disease are the perfect breeding ground for the emergence
and spread of a virus like Ebola. That’s why the virus has flared up again
and again in African countries for decades and why subsequent outbreaks
followed the 2014 outbreak in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2021, cases of Ebola re-emerged
for the first time in Guinea since the great outbreak of 2014–2016 (WHO
2021c).
Instead of tackling deeper-seated socio-economic problems underlying
the emergence and spread of the epidemic, such as strengthening the
precarious public health systems in these countries, the global health
response focused on crisis management, including emergency prepared-
ness, surveillance, control and containment (Nunes 2016, 552). It did,
however, take a very long time before an international response kicked
in and the three Western African countries were swamped with aid agen-
cies, military troops, international organisations and other organisations
to contain the disease.
4.3.2.3 The Role of Médecins Sans Frontières

Instead of the WHO and its member states, it was an NGO that
became the lead protagonist in the unfolding drama in Western Africa.
The humanitarian aid NGO Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans

Frontières—MSF) learned of the first cases of a potential Ebola disease
outbreak in Guinea in March 2014 (MSF 2015, 5–6). Headquartered in
Geneva, MSF is a globally organised NGO providing emergency medical
support in natural disaster events, conflict situations and infectious disease
outbreaks. The organisation is committed to an ethic of global justice
beyond state borders (Dechaine 2002). This global outlook relying on
global networks of health care specialists allowed MSF to act swiftly.
MSF’s medical interventions rely on a sophisticated global supply chain
consisting of five MSF supply centres (Amsterdam, Brussels, Bordeaux,
Dubai, Nairobi) which are able to dispatch supplies to field missions
across the globe within 48 hours. These supplies include ready-to-use kits
for emergencies, such as nutrition kits, rapid intervention surgical kits and
field hospital kits (MSF 2016). In a disease outbreak, MSF can resort
to emergency pools of internationally recognised health experts. MSF
has been involved in the management of Ebola epidemics since 1995.
This experience equips the organisation with a wealth of knowledge and
expertise unrivalled by any other NGO—or state. In 2014, the two MSF
operating centres for Ebola in Brussels and Barcelona united a pool of
about 100 Ebola specialists from across the world. In emergency situa-
tions, these specialists are then employed by MSF on a short-term basis
and sent into the field if their employers, such as hospitals or universities,
agree (Kratz 2017, 86, 96).
Immediately after learning of the outbreak in March 2014, MSF sent
more than 60 MSF international staff to Guinea and sounded the alarm
for the international community to get involved (MSF 2015, 6–7). But
MSF remained the sole protagonist for months to come. In its zeal to stop
the epidemic from spreading further, MSF set up 15 Ebola management
and transit centres for blood-testing (6 in Sierra Leone, 5 in Guinea and
4 in Liberia), where more than 8000 people were treated (MSF 2015, 2).
In addition to these centres, MSF trained local staff in training facilities,
employed rapid response teams, engaged in awareness-raising activities
among local communities and supported research in clinical trial sites
(MSF 2015, 6, 7, 10, 22). This mission was to become “the most exten-
sive knowledge-transfer exercise in MSF’s history, with more than 1,000
people trained” (MSF 2015, 10).
On 21 June, after three months in action and with its resources and
staff at the limit, MSF characterised the epidemic as “out of control”
(MSF 2014). In July, a doctor employed by Samaritan’s Purse, a smaller
138 M. FRAUNDORFER
US-based NGO supporting MSF, contracted the virus and was flown to
the US. Then, an infected patient who had travelled from Western Africa
to the US became the first case of Ebola diagnosed outside of Africa. In
Spain, a nurse who had treated an infected Spanish citizen was also tested
positive, making this case the first human-to-human transmission outside
of Africa (MSF 2015, 11). Now, Ebola was turning into a pandemic of
global reach. And still, no action from the international community.
4.3.2.4 The Response of the WHO and the UN

The WHO had responded to the crisis through GOARN, surveilling
the situation in Western Africa and deploying a response team of 113
health experts to the region between March and May 2014 to assist the
health authorities of the three affected countries and support the WHO
Regional Office for Africa. After all, assisting member states and coordi-
nating member states’ actions is the WHO’s principal mandate. As during
the SARS crisis, the WHO depended on its member states for a more
autonomous and proactive response. And since the SARS crisis, member
states had undertaken various efforts to rein in the WHO’s authority. Due
to funding cuts and staff reductions, the WHO’s emergency response
capacity was severely undermined. The coordinating activities of the
WHO Regional Office for Africa were hampered by the political influ-
ence of local governments. And given the WHO’s other engagements
in humanitarian crises in Syria, South Sudan and the Central African
Republic, the organisation lacked the financial and human resources to
respond to a crisis which was unprecedented in the history of the WHO.
Despite the WHO’s successful management of the SARS crisis, member
states remained wary of expanding the WHO’s authority. The revised
IHRs in the aftermath of the SARS crisis reflect this concern. State
sovereignty remained the overarching principle for WHO member states
(Kamradt-Scott 2016, 405, 408, 409; Kratz 2017, 88).
Given all these constraints, it took until 8 August for the WHO to
finally declare Ebola “a public health emergency of international concern”
and trigger an international response in line with the International Health
Regulations (WHO 2014). On 2 September, MSF demanded in the UN
General Assembly that UN member states “immediately deploy civilian
and military assets with expertise in biohazard containment” (MSF 2015,
13). Two weeks later, the UN Security Council declared the Ebola crisis as
a public health emergency and a threat to international peace and security.
This declaration was followed by the announcement of UN Secretary-

General Ban Ki-Moon to set up the very first UN health mission called
the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), which was
established in unanimity by the UN General Assembly and the UN Secu-
rity Council as a system-wide UN response to Ebola (Deloffre 2016,
48; MSF 2015, 14). It is noteworthy to emphasise that a pandemic of
unprecedented proportions produced a rare event in the UN’s history: a
unanimous decision taken by both the UN General Assembly and the UN
Security Council to send an unprecedented UN health mission to Western
Africa. Simultaneously, US President Barack Obama announced that he
would send 3000 troops to Liberia (Benton 2017, 28). The WHO, the
UN and UN member states had declared war on Ebola and were prepared
to fight the epidemic as such.
UNMEER symbolised the international community’s traditional secu-
rity approach to disease containment, with a focus on technical and
medical aspects (Deloffre 2016, 53). By adopting a top-down approach,
decisions were largely taken by UN and WHO personnel to stop the
outbreak, treat the infected, guarantee essential services, preserve stability
and prevent further outbreaks. Long-term investments in health infras-
tructures and improvements of other health-related conditions such as
prenatal and maternal care and child-protection services were not envis-
aged. Instead, the exclusively technical and clinical approach entailed
isolating and caring for patients, guaranteeing safe and dignified burials of
those who had succumbed to the disease and restricting people’s rights
to liberty and freedom of movement. The mission had a clear military
component with almost 2900 US troops, 750 from the UK and 720
civilian and military health workers deployed by the African Union. With
UNMEER, a phalanx of global health governance actors descended upon
the three Western African countries, ranging from regional and inter-
national organisations (African Union, European Union, WHO, WFP,
UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, the World Bank) to aid agencies (USAID,
DFID) to private philanthropic foundations, multinational corporations
and NGOs (Deloffre 2016; UN 2019).
UNMEER represented a colossal endeavour to coordinate a gigantic
global health response composed of a diverse group of global health
governance actors. Supported by some of the principal international
bodies and organisations in global governance (the UN Security
140 M. FRAUNDORFER
Council, the UN General Assembly, the WHO) and the entire interna-
tional community, this mission was ultimately successful in containing
and defeating the epidemic. This success, however, was bittersweet.
Considering the impressive amount of financial and technical resources
commanded by this UN mission, it is sobering to observe that the mission
entirely ignored the socio-economic conditions underlying the disease,
such as poverty, precarious public health systems and lacking access to
health care.
4.3.2.5 Transnational Vaccine Development Efforts

On another front, the global health response was much more effective:
the successful development of the very first Ebola vaccine in history.
Building on already existing efforts of experimental drug development, a
transnational partnership involving the WHO, laboratories, research insti-
tutes, pharmaceutical companies, philanthropic foundations and govern-
mental actors from Guinea, Norway and Canada, substantially accelerated
the research process to develop a vaccine, VSV-EBOV, that showed an
efficacy of almost 100 per cent in test trials in Guinea in 2015 (Fraun-
dorfer 2016, 347). Officially tested and approved, the vaccine is now used
as the standard treatment against Ebola’s Zaire virus strand, the deadliest
of Ebola’s four virus strands and responsible for the outbreak in Western
Africa.
4.3.3 CASE STUDY 3: COVID-19—Global Cooperation at Its

Limits
4.3.3.1 The Virus and Its Origins
In many ways, the outbreak of the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease)
pandemic in late 2019 felt like a déjà vu of what had happened during
the SARS outbreak almost two decades earlier. Named as SARS-CoV-2
(Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2), the virus respon-
sible for COVID-19 shares many similarities with SARS-CoV-1, the virus
responsible for the 2002/03 SARS pandemic (see also Box 4.3).
Box 4.3: The 2012 MERS-CoV Outbreak

In 2012, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-
CoV) became the second major coronavirus outbreak after SARS. Trans-
mitted by infected dromedary camels in Saudi Arabia, the virus spread to
other countries across the world. The countries most affected included
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Republic of Korea.
Between 2012 and 2020, 2519 cases of MERS were confirmed, of which
2121 cases were reported in Saudi Arabia. Approximately 35 per cent of
all people infected by the virus died.
Unlike SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV does not spread easily from person to
person and requires close contact for human-to-human transmission. The
origins of the virus are still not entirely understood. But it is assumed that
at some point in the distant past bats had transmitted the virus to camels
which then became major reservoirs of coronaviruses before passing on
the virus to humans. While several MERS-CoV vaccines and treatments
are in development, no specific treatment exists to date.
Sources WHO (2019, 2020a).
As a respiratory disease, COVID-19 comes with flu-like symptoms and

the temporary loss of the sense of smell and taste. Particularly for older
people and those with pre-existing health conditions, COVID-19 can have
serious consequences, causing severe pneumonia and damage to other
vital organs. Across all age groups, COVID-19 can also lead to neurolog-
ical complications (brain damage, brain haemorrhage and memory loss)
and long-lasting health problems stretching for several months or years,
including chronic fatigue syndrome, as experienced by many people with
SARS (GAVI 2020a; Marshall 2020). One of the most problematic aspects
of SARS-CoV-2 refers to its asymptomatic (virus transmission by people
who do not show symptoms) and highly infectious nature.
While the 2002/03 SARS pandemic was largely confined to Asia with
low fatality rates worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic developed into
the most serious global pandemic in the early twenty-first century. The
virus spread to every country and territory in the world, creating a global
health emergency not experienced for generations.
The origins of COVID-19 are intrinsically linked to the global envi-
ronmental crisis. SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 originated in horseshoe
bats (genus rinolophus) (El Zowalaty and Järhult 2020; Latinne et al.
2020; Van Staden 2020). All known coronaviruses are of animal origin,
frequently jumping to other species and easily adapting to new hosts
142 M. FRAUNDORFER
(Latinne et al. 2020, 1). SARS-CoV-2 probably jumped from horseshoe

bats to pangolins before infecting humans at Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood
Market (El Zowalaty and Järhult 2020, 4). It is at such wet markets,
notorious for their lack of hygiene and cruel treatment of animals, where
close interaction occurs between humans and other wild species, such as
bats and pangolins, making wet markets an ideal place for the transmission
of zoonotic viruses to humans.
Chinese wet markets are also hotspots for trafficked animals, among
them horseshoe bats and pangolins. The pangolin, risking extinction, is
the most trafficked animal worldwide and extremely popular in China
for its meat and scales used in Chinese traditional medicine (Van Staden
2020, 443). The demand for wild animals and wild animal trafficking,
as well as increasing interactions between humans and wild animals, have
been driven by China’s economic growth, the accelerating loss of natural
habitats and widespread environmental degradation (Aguirre et al. 2020,
257–258; Cheng et al. 2007, 660).
Given these developments, scientists had warned for years that a repeti-
tion of the SARS pandemic caused by the emergence of a novel zoonotic
virus was just a question of time (Aguirre et al. 2020, 258; Cheng et al.
2007, 683). Bats are well-known reservoirs for zoonotic viruses (Boni
et al. 2020, 1415). And the accelerating loss of their natural habitats
combined with an unhampered illegal wildlife trade and the ever more
frequent exposition of bats to humans and other wild animals in places
such as wet markets will only increase the likelihood of new emerging
viruses and new pandemics with zoonotic origin in the future (Aguirre
et al. 2020, 257–259).
The close relationship between the emergence of infectious diseases
like SARS and COVID-19 and the environmental crisis highlights that
exclusively medical and technocratic solutions, such as vaccine develop-
ment and crisis management, completely miss the point of this crisis.
Suppose the environmental roots of the 2002/03 SARS pandemic had
been taken more seriously by the Chinese government and other actors
in global governance. In that case, the COVID-19 pandemic could have
been avoided. As a consequence, the COVID-19 pandemic requires a
paradigm shift in our response to global challenges, acknowledging the
fundamental links between infectious disease outbreaks, the environ-
mental crisis and food consumption habits. Such a paradigm shift involves
profound reflections on natural habitat loss, environmental degradation,
our treatment of wild animals (embodied by the illegal international
wildlife trade and wet markets) and farm animals, as well as our insatiable
hunger for meat (Petrikova et al. 2020; Roe et al. 2020).
4.3.3.2 Westphalian Mentalities

In late December 2019, the Canadian Artificial Intelligence start-up Blue
Dot picked up the first signs of the emergence of a novel infectious disease
outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan, ahead of the WHO’s transnational
monitoring networks (McCall 2020, e166; Stieg 2020). The Chinese
authorities, however, remained silent on the novel disease outbreak, once
again engaging in efforts to cover up the new developments.
On 30 December 2019, Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist working at
Wuhan Central Hospital, tried to warn his colleagues on a social media
platform about a novel disease similar to SARS some of his patients were
suffering from. Several days later, he and other medical experts were
detained by the local authorities. After signing a statement that accused
him of disturbing the public order, he returned to the hospital to treat his
patients (and ignored the statement he had signed). Then, he contracted
the novel virus and became one of the first victims to die from COVID-
19 in early February 2020 (Green 2020). He and other Chinese public
health experts denounced the secretive attitude of the Chinese author-
ities. Their initial attempts to cover up the novel disease outbreak and
censor critical information about the new disease sparked huge outcry on
Chinese social media platforms, which celebrated Wenliang and others as
heroes who shared information about the novel virus from early on (Abazi
2020, 378; Fu and Zhu 2020; Liu 2020).
When in January 2020, Wenliang’s initial warnings about the novel
virus were confirmed by rising infection rates in Wuhan, the Chinese
authorities changed their strategy. On 12 January, the Chinese govern-
ment publicly shared with the WHO the genetic sequence of the novel
virus; WHO experts were led into the country for a field visit in Wuhan;
and at the end of January, the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, together with a WHO delegation, met with the Chinese
government in Beijing (WHO 2020b). On 23 January, the Chinese
government locked down Wuhan, a megacity of 11 million people, and
the neighbouring city of Huanggang of more than 6 million people, effec-
tively putting almost 20 million people under quarantine (Nature 2020).
Additional restrictions, such as travel restrictions, were also put in place
in other Chinese cities.
144 M. FRAUNDORFER
On 30 January, the WHO declared COVID-19 “a public health

emergency of international concern” after the virus had spread across
the region and worldwide. On 10 February, the deaths resulting from
COVID-19 in China (more than 900) had already surpassed the global
death toll from the SARS pandemic (Nature 2020). Throughout 2020
and 2021, national and subnational governments across the world tried to
get the outbreak under control by repeatedly locking down cities, regions
and entire countries.
Given the scale of the outbreak, the Chinese government started to
collaborate with the WHO at a much earlier stage than was the case
during the SARS outbreak. But the WHO was unable to exercise strong
authority during the pandemic. Continuing funding cuts and budget
restraints since the SARS crisis had made it difficult for the WHO to
adequately react to the 2014 Ebola outbreak and did not help the organ-
isation to organise an effective global response to COVID-19 (Clift and
Røttingen 2018). During the pandemic in 2020, the US government
under Donald Trump, hostile towards the WHO and multilateral coop-
eration, further exacerbated the WHO’s budget restraints by freezing US
contributions and threatening to withdraw from the organisation. This
situation was only reversed under the new US President Joe Biden in
early 2021 (The White House 2021).
But even more problematic during the spread of the pandemic was
that governments across the world contested and undermined the WHO’s
global coordination attempts. The International Health Regulations
(IHRs), historically weakened by constant problems of underfunding
and lacking operational capacities in many poorer countries (Kandel
et al. 2020; Solomon 2019, 2), were openly disregarded by many
powerful countries. While at the beginning of the 2002 SARS outbreak,
it was only China ignoring the IHRs, this time governments across the
world, including from Europe and North America, violated the IHRs
by ignoring WHO recommendations and advice (Habibi et al. 2020).
This widespread lack of governmental support for the central international
response mechanism to address infectious disease outbreaks significantly
worsened the pandemic. Not surprisingly, those countries which were
most aggressive in ignoring the WHO and the IHRs throughout 2020
were also those with the highest infection and mortality rates, including
the US, Brazil and the UK, while many other countries heeding WHO
advice and recommendations did much better in controlling the disease.
4.3.3.3 The Biomedical Response

The WHO coordinated several global efforts geared towards accelerating
a biomedical response to the pandemic; efforts which were also constantly
undermined by governments’ selfish behaviour. For instance, the WHO
launched an international clinical trial and a global serologic study to
improve the world’s understanding of the virus. The clinical trial, called
Solidarity I, tested several drugs that various governments had promoted
as effective against COVID-19, including the antimalarial drug hydrox-
ychloroquine, the antiretroviral drugs lopinavir/ritonavir used to treat
HIV/AIDS and the autoimmune drug interferon. The trial found none of
these drugs were effective against COVID-19 (WHO 2020c, d). And yet,
the US government under Trump and the Brazilian government under
Bolsonaro continued to recommend hydroxychloroquine, ignoring WHO
advice and scientific findings (BBC 2020; Londoño 2020).
Another major WHO-led initiative aimed to share information and
facilitate access to a variety of medical tools urgently needed in many
countries in the early stage of the pandemic, including ventilators
and personal protective equipment (WHO 2021d). Many governments,
however, ignored the initiative and had no intention of voluntarily sharing
equipment through the WHO (Patnaik 2021, 4).
Through the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), the
WHO aimed to support the global R&D process on potential treatment.
The ACT-A united all major global health actors with significant involve-
ment in vaccine development, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Founda-
tion, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the
GAVI global vaccine alliance, the Wellcome Trust, the Foundation for
Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), the World Bank and many others,
resembling the necessary financial and economic power to boost a strong
biomedical and socio-economic response to COVID-19. Initially, the
ACT-A was organised along four major themes, supporting diagnostics,
therapeutics, health systems strengthening, and vaccines development to
help stimulate a comprehensive global health response (WHO 2020e).
But very soon it became clear that governments and other global health
actors prioritised the development of vaccines, sidelining and ignoring the
other three (more socially oriented) themes. On vaccines, the COVAX
facility, jointly governed by the WHO, the GAVI alliance and CEPI,
became the central coordinating mechanism in global health governance
to assist the global and equitable roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines.
146 M. FRAUNDORFER
COVAX aims to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines in

those countries that usually lack the economic power to negotiate
favourable deals with pharmaceutical companies. Drawing on funding
from high-income countries and other donors, COVAX uses these finan-
cial resources to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies affordable
prices of vaccines for the roll-out in low-income economies (GAVI
2020b). Although many high-income countries financially supported
COVAX, they secured their vaccines supply through bilateral deals with
pharmaceutical companies, thus undermining a globally coordinated
approach symbolised by COVAX (Callaway 2020; Patnaik 2021; Phelan
et al. 2020).
Apart from COVAX, governments worldwide poured billions of US
dollars into vaccine development (Wouters et al. 2021, 1025). Depending
on multiple factors—companies’ financial incentives, government support
and the biological nature of a virus—, vaccine development can take years
or decades. A vaccine for Ebola was finally developed in 2015 in the wake
of the Ebola pandemic in Western Africa, almost exactly forty years after
the discovery of the virus. For HIV/AIDS, the development of a vaccine
has so far proven unsuccessful. In the case of COVID-19, several compa-
nies and research facilities worldwide took no more than twelve months
to develop ten vaccines to such a standard that they could be approved for
use by regulatory agencies or the WHO (Wouters et al. 2021, 1025). The
first vaccines were rolled out in individual countries in December 2020,
one year after the initial outbreak. The COVAX facility started rolling out
the first vaccines in African and Asian countries in February 2021 (GAVI
2021; WHO 2021e). From the very beginning, the lofty ambitions of
global solidarity symbolised by COVAX were not only undermined by
the selfishness of high-income countries’ national interests. They were also
worn down by the deep inequalities ingrained in the global health gover-
nance system. While most of the populations in high-income countries
were double-vaccinated by the summer of 2021 and many restrictions
were lifted in Europe and North America, low- and middle-income coun-
tries in the global south, particularly in Africa, have struggled to secure
enough vaccine supply for their own populations, fighting a losing battle
against COVID-19.
Global health governance actors’ almost exclusive focus on vaccines
development and manufacturing and the simultaneous nation-wide
vaccine roll-outs in high-income countries shifted attention away from
the environmental root causes of the outbreak, ignoring urgent climate
action on environmental degradation, natural habitat loss and wildlife traf-

ficking. In the same vein, the neglect of socio-economic conditions, such
as public health system strengthening in many low- and middle-income
countries, illustrates that the global health response prioritises once again
the short-term biomedical approach of containment over socially and
environmentally sustainable long-term strategies. This short-sightedness
does not only risk the emergence of a new zoonotic virus outbreak with
potentially global consequences. It also risks turning COVID-19 into
a disease of poverty, primarily affecting impoverished and marginalised
communities across the world due to the lack of adequate access to
public health systems, precarious public health systems, difficult access
to life-saving treatment (such as vaccines) and the structural inequalities
ingrained in global health governance.
While many scholars and public health experts have called for a rethink
of how we respond to pandemics, the global health governance response
that unfolded in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak fatally replicated all
too well-known patterns. The global health governance agenda has been
almost exclusively dominated by the biomedical approach, prioritising
the development of medical treatment and vaccines over more holistic
approaches. This biomedical approach is certainly crucial to containing
the spread of the disease. An exclusive biomedical approach, however,
risks exacerbating infectious disease outbreaks and pandemics in the
Anthropocene. Governments, international organisations, global health
partnerships and other global health actors have thrown colossal weight
behind biomedical solutions, most notably in the form of vaccine devel-
opment. At the same time, it is unclear whether global governance actors
can summon the political will to pour similar amounts of money into
global cooperation efforts to tackle the environmental root causes of the
pandemic.
4.4 Summary
4.4.1 The Consolidation of Authority Beyond the State
The pandemics of SARS, Ebola and COVID-19 discussed in the case
studies all point to a fundamentally new reality. In the past, infectious
disease outbreaks which spread quickly across the globe and simul-
taneously affected societies in all world regions were an exception.
148 M. FRAUNDORFER
With planetary environmental challenges like global warming, acceler-

ating deforestation, natural habitat loss and international wildlife traf-
ficking occurring in a context of high-speed globalised flows of humans,
non-human animals and goods, infectious disease outbreaks and global
pandemics have become a new normal in the twenty-first century.
Since the 1990s, the global health governance architecture has devel-
oped in scale and complexity like never before in history. The past
two decades alone have witnessed more change, transformation and
dynamism in the global health governance architecture than in the
previous two hundred years together. States are no longer the only key
players. The global health governance architecture is significantly shaped
by NGOs, global social movements, philanthropic foundations, phar-
maceutical companies and other players. Transnational monitoring and
surveillance networks can detect infectious disease outbreaks and track
their evolving patterns of infection and fatality rates in unprecedented
ways. Some NGOs, such as Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without
Borders), have developed emergency response capacities on a global scale
unrivalled by any state. Since the 2000s, global health has also seen a
new biomedical revolution with innumerable global partnerships heavily
investing in the research and development process for new treatment
on several (neglected) infectious diseases affecting millions of people
in the global south. Other transnational initiatives have contributed to
the development of an effective Ebola vaccine. And in the COVID-19
pandemic, transnational initiatives, companies and other research facilities
have developed a large number of COVID-19 vaccines in record time.
The case of SARS poignantly illustrated how a global pandemic is most
effectively confronted through international and transnational coopera-
tion steered by a strong international authority, in this case the WHO.
The WHO’s authority was further boosted by reliable transnational
surveillance and monitoring networks that laid bare the Chinese govern-
ment’s attempts to cover up the outbreak. In a sense, the unfolding of
the pandemic amounted to a transnationalisation of national interests, as
states realised that their national interest was best served by relying on the
WHO’s international authority in coordinating a global health response.
And so, states readily accepted the boosted authority of the WHO. In
turn, the case of the 2014–2016 Ebola pandemic showed that MSF’s
unfolding role as a decisive transnational authority on health emergen-
cies, backed by a global movement of doctors, epidemiologists and public
health experts, can also have significant impact on containing infectious

disease outbreaks.
Despite these substantial advances in international, transnational and
global health cooperation on global health responses to infectious
disease outbreaks, global health governance seems overwhelmed by more
complex disease outbreaks with high fatality rates or other complications,
such as in the cases of Ebola and COVID-19. In the case of SARS, the
global health community was arguably lucky enough to confront a flu-like
virus that did not cause high fatality rates (like Ebola) or high infec-
tion rates (as in the case of COVID-19). The epidemics of Ebola and
COVID-19, however, revealed the limitations and weaknesses of global
health governance, particularly once a disease outbreak becomes a truly
global pandemic spreading within weeks across the globe and affecting all
countries simultaneously, as in the case of COVID-19.
4.4.2 The Resilience of the Westphalian Logic

Despite the growth of various instances of authority beyond the state,
global health responses continue to be trapped in a state-centric (West-
phalian) logic. While it has become much more difficult for states to
disrupt and undermine transboundary health cooperation, the West-
phalian foundation of global governance shines through at every twist
and turn of global health responses.
The case of Ebola illustrated that global health responses in the global
south continue to be shaped by global governance’s colonial legacy. The
global health response was characterised by the neglect of affected people
on the ground, basic socio-economic conditions in three Western African
countries and the environmental origins of the virus. The national and
global health responses used very traditional and conventional tools like
quarantine, travel restrictions, the employment of the military and the
portrayal of the virus as an enemy. These predominant features were
successful in containing the disease outbreaks. But they did little to help
those marginalised communities that were hit the hardest by the epidemic.
Nor did the global health response alleviate the socio-economic condi-
tions in the affected countries that facilitated the spread of the virus.
The recurring emergence of Ebola in African countries since 2016 bears
testament to this governance failure.
Despite the most remarkable leaps towards a global health governance
architecture since the 1990s, the case of COVID-19 revealed that the
150 M. FRAUNDORFER
age-old struggle between national authority and international authority

remains a defining feature of global health governance in the twenty-
first century. From the very beginning, the global health response to
COVID-19 was pervaded by selfish nationalist behaviour and aggres-
sive nationalism, eroding the authority of the WHO and its initiatives
to set up various global cooperation platforms. In addition to the detri-
mental impact of the Westphalian logic, the global health response was
also characterised by the neglect of the environmental root causes of the
outbreak and the socio-economic conditions in many countries world-
wide that facilitated the spread of the virus. And as in the case of the
2014–2016 Ebola pandemic, the global health response to COVID-19
replicated the deep structural inequalities between powerful and highly
developed countries in the global north and less powerful countries in
the global south, most poignantly symbolised by the stark inequalities in
the global vaccine roll-out.
4.4.3 Biomedical Solutions

Supported by the resilience of the Westphalian logic, global health
responses are incredibly short-sighted in the face of the complex socio-
economic and environmental factors underlying disease outbreaks. And
it is these factors that will become ever more defining in the Anthro-
pocene. Nowadays, the transformations of the Earth-system are crucial
to understanding the root causes of infectious disease outbreaks. And
yet, these environmental factors have been entirely ignored by predomi-
nant national and global health responses. Changing climatic conditions
and accelerating environmental degradation and natural habitat loss will
exacerbate the socio-economic conditions underlying disease outbreaks
and pile even more pressure on the barely coping global health gover-
nance architecture. The premisses of germ theory that emerged in the
nineteenth century have been deeply incorporated into the dynamics of
international and global health cooperation.
The resulting technical-clinical approach to infectious disease outbreaks
can render impressive results, as the transnational efforts to find an
Ebola vaccine and the development of COVID-19 vaccines have shown.
Vaccines are definitely an adequate tool to contain disease outbreaks
and control pandemics. But technology-based solutions are ill-equipped
when confronting the environmental root causes of disease outbreaks
and tackling their long-term socio-economic consequences. Ideally, tech-

nology-based approaches should be complemented by international and
transnational responses which address the socio-economic and environ-
mental factors underlying disease outbreaks. This will require a rethink
of how global health governance works. It is not clear, however, if we
are anywhere near such a transformative paradigm change required to
confront the challenges of the Anthropocene more effectively.
The environmental root causes of the COVID-19 outbreak, as well
as the socio-economic conditions that exacerbated the pandemic in
countries across the world, have been stressed by scientists and noted
by politicians and other international decision-makers. But the gigantic
global efforts channelled into vaccines development, manufacturing and
distribution sidelined once again political action on these determining
environmental and socio-economic factors. COVID-19 vaccines help
contain the pandemic. But the global challenge of infectious diseases
in the Anthropocene will remain. And given the thawing of permafrost
and ongoing environmental degradation across the world, we will have to
brace ourselves for similar infectious disease outbreaks in the near future,
for which we seem to be as unprepared as in our patchy response to
COVID-19.
Questions
• Discuss the relationship between infectious diseases and the global

climate crisis! To what extent can infectious disease outbreaks and
epidemics be regarded as global environmental challenges? And how
can an understanding of infectious disease outbreaks as environ-
mental challenges reshape global health responses?
• Compare the authority and legitimacy of the WHO during the
2002/2003 SARS pandemic and the COVID-19 pandemic! Discuss
the WHO’s source of authority and legitimacy, as well as govern-
ments’ (de)legitimation practices, during both pandemics!
• Explain how transnational monitoring and surveillance networks
have circumvented Westphalian patterns of non-reporting and thus
strengthened the authority of the WHO!
• Explain the authority and legitimacy of MSF as a leading global
health actor during the 2014–2016 Ebola pandemic!
• Discuss the tragic entanglements between global health responses to
infectious disease outbreaks and the global environmental challenges
of the Anthropocene! To what extent are terms like Capitalocene
152 M. FRAUNDORFER
and Technocene useful to explain recurring patterns in global health

responses to infectious disease outbreaks?
References
Abazi, V. 2020. Truth Distancing? Whistleblowing as Remedy to Censorship
During COVID-19. European Journal of Risk Regulation 11 (2): 375–381.
Abeysinghe, S. 2015. Pandemics, Science and Policy: H1N1 and the World Health
Organisation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Abeysinghe, S. 2016. Ebola at the Borders: Newspaper Representations and the
Politics of Border Control. Third World Quarterly 37 (3): 452–467.
Aguirre, A.A., R. Catherina, H. Frye, and L. Shelley. 2020. Illicit Wildlife
Trade, Wet Markets, and COVID-19: Preventing Future Pandemics. World
Medical & Health Policy 12 (3): 256–265.
Anderson, E.-L., and A. Beresford. 2016. Infectious Injustice: The Political
Foundations of the Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone. Third World Quarterly 37
(3): 468–486.
BBC. 2020. Coronavirus: Hydroxychloroquine Ineffective Says Fauci, July
29 [Online]. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-
53575964. Accessed 9 Feb 2021.
Behringer, W. 2010. A Cultural History of Climate. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Benton, A. 2017. Whose Security? Militarization and Securitization During West
Africa’s Ebola Outbreak. In The Politics of Fear: Médecins Sans Frontières and
the West African Ebola Epidemic, ed. M. Hofman and S. Au, 25–50. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Blažina-Tomić, Z. 2015. Expelling the Plague: The Health Office and the
Implementation of Quarantine in Dubrovnik, 1377–1533. Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press.
Boni, M.F., P. Lemey, X. Jiang, T.T. Lam, B.W. Perry, T.A. Castoe, A.
Rambaut, and D.L. Robertson. 2020. Evolutionary Origins of the SARS-
CoV-2 Sarbecovirus Lineage Responsible for the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Nature Microbiology 5: 1408–1417.
Callaway, E. 2020. The Unequal Scramble for Coronavirus Vaccines. Nature
584: 506–507.
Cheng, V.C.C., S.K.P. Lau, P.C.Y. Woo, and K.Y. Yuen. 2007. Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus as an Agent of Emerging and Remerging
Infection. Clinical Microbiology Reviews 20 (4): 660–694.
Clift, C., and J.A. Røttingen. 2018. New Approaches to WHO Financing: The
Key to Better Health. BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.) 361: k2218.
Crosby, A.W. 2003. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Conse-
quences of 1492. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Crosby, A.W. 2004. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe,
900–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dechaine, D.R. 2002. Humanitarian Space and the Social Imaginary: Médecins
Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders and the Rhetoric of Global
Community. Journal of Communication Inquiry 26 (4): 354–369.
Deloffre, M. 2016. Human Security Governance: Is UNMEER the Way
Forward? Global Health Governance X: 41–60.
Dion, M., P. Abdelmalik, and A. Mawudeku. 2015. Big Data and the
Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN). Canada Communi-
cable Disease Report = Releve des maladies transmissibles au Canada 41 (9):
209–214.
El Zowalaty, M.E., and J.D. Järhult. 2020. From SARS to COVID-19: A
Previously Unknown SARS-Related Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) of Pandemic
Potential Infecting Humans—Call for a One Health Approach. One Health
9: 1–6.
Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Pan American Health Organization [Online].
Available from: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pan-American-Health-
Organization. Accessed 30 July.
Faria, N.R., A. Rambaut, M.A. Suchard, G. Baele, T. Bedford, M.J. Ward, A.J.
Tatem, J.D. Sousa, N. Arinaminpathy, J. Pépin, D. Posada, M. Peeters, O.G.
Pybus, and P. Lemey. 2014. The Early Spread and Epidemic Ignition of HIV-
1 in Human Populations. Science 346 (6205): 56–61.
Fidler, D.P. 2003. SARS: Political Pathology of the First Post-Westphalian
Pathogen. The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 31 (4): 485–505.
Fidler, D.P. 2004a. Germs, Governance, and Global Public Health in the Wake
of SARS. The Journal of Clinical Investigation 113 (6): 799–804.
Fidler, D.P. 2004b. SARS: Governance and the Globalization of Disease. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fraundorfer, M. 2016. How to Confront the Threat of Ebola? Arguing for
Reinforced Efforts to Promote Transnational Solidarity. Global Policy 7 (3):
340–350.
Fu, K., and Y. Zhu. 2020. Did the World Overlook the Media’s Early Warning
of COVID-19. Journal of Risk Research 23 (7–8): 1047–1051.
GAVI. 2020a. The Long-Term Health Effects of COVID-19, June 19
[Online]. Available from: https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/long-term-
health-effects-covid-19. Accessed 3 June 2021.
GAVI. 2020b. The GAVI COVAX AMC: An Investment Opportunity
[Online]. Available from: https://www.gavi.org/sites/default/files/2020-
06/Gavi-COVAX-AMC-IO.pdf. Accessed 23 Mar 2021.
154 M. FRAUNDORFER
GAVI. 2021. COVAX Vaccine Roll-Out [Online]. Available from: https://www.

gavi.org/live/covax-vaccine-roll-out. Accessed 8 Mar 2021.
Gillings, M.R., and I.T. Paulsen. 2014. Microbiology of the Anthropocene.
Anthropocene 5: 1–8.
GLEWS. n.d. GLEWS+ [Online]. Available from: http://www.glews.net/.
Accessed 3 June 2021.
GOARN. 2020. Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network [Online].
Available from: https://extranet.who.int/goarn/. Accessed 3 June 2021.
Green, A. 2020. Li Wenliang. The Lancet 395: 682.
Greenberg, D.A., and W.J. Palen. 2019. A Deadly Amphibian Disease Goes
Global. Science 363 (6434): 1386–1388.
Gross, M. 2019. Permafrost Thaw Releases Problems. Current Biology 29 (2):
R39–R41.
Habibi, R., G.L. Burci, T.C. de Campos, D. Chirwa, M. Cinà, S. Dagron, M.
Eccleston-Turner, L. Forman, L.O. Gostin, B.M. Meier, S. Negri, G. Ooms,
S. Sekalala, A. Taylor, A.E. Yamin, and S.J. Hoffman. 2020. Do Not Violate
the International Health Regulations During the COVID-19 Outbreak. The
Lancet (British Edition) 395 (10225): 664–666.
Hutchins, D.A., J.K. Jansson, J.V. Remais, V.I. Rich, B.K. Singh, and P. Trivedi.
2019. Climate Change Microbiology—Problems and Perspectives. Nature
Reviews Microbiology 17 (6): 391.
International Society for Infectious Diseases. 2010. About ProMED-Mail
[Online]. Available from: https://www.promedmail.org/aboutus/. Accessed
3 June 2021.
Iovino, S. 2020. Hyperobject COVID-19, May 14. Fifteeneightyfour [Online].
Available from: http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2020/05/hyperobject-cov
id-19/. Accessed 26 Mar 2021.
Johnson, N.P.A.S., and J. Mueller. 2002. Updating the Accounts: Global
Mortality of the 1918–1920 ‘Spanish’ Influenza Pandemic. Bulletin of the
History of Medicine 76 (1): 105–115.
Kamradt-Scott, A. 2015. Managing Global Health Security: The World Health
Organization and Disease Outbreak Control. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kamradt-Scott, A. 2016. WHO’s to Blame? The World Health Organization
and the 2014 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa. Third World Quarterly 37 (3):
401–418.
Kandel, N., S. Chungong, O. Abbas, and J. Xing. 2020. Health Security Capac-
ities in the Context of COVID-19 Outbreak: An Analysis of International
Health Regulations Annual Report Data from 182 Countries. The Lancet
(British Edition) 395 (10229): 1047–1053.
Kratz, T. 2017. The Initial International Aid Response in Sierra Leone: A View-
point from the Field. In The Politics of Fear: Médecins Sans Frontières and the
West African Ebola Epidemic, ed. M. Hofman and S. Au, 85–100. Oxford:
Lai, S., Y. Qin, B.J. Cowling, X. Ren, N.A. Wardrop, M. Gilbert, T.K. Tsang, P.
Wu, L. Feng, H. Jiang, Z. Peng, J. Zheng, Q. Liao, S. Li, P.W. Horby, J.J.
Farrar, G.F. Gao, A.J. Tatem, and H. Yu. 2016. Global Epidemiology of Avian
Influenza A H5N1 Virus Infection in Humans, 1997–2015: A Systematic
Review of Individual Case Data. The Lancet: Infectious Diseases 16 (7): e108–
e118.
Latinne, A., B. Hu, K.J. Olival, G. Zhu, L. Zhang, H. Li, A.A. Chmura, H.E.
Field, C. Zambrana-Torrelio, J.H. Epstein, B. Li, W. Zhang, L. Wang, Z.
Shi, and P. Daszak. 2020. Origin and Cross-Species Transmission of Bat
Coronaviruses in China. Nature Communications 11 (4235): 1–15.
Lee, K., and D. Fidler. 2007. Avian and Pandemic Influenza: Progress and
Problems with Global Health Governance. Global Public Health 2 (3):
215–234.
Liu, Ji. 2020. From Social Drama to Political Performance: China’s Multi-Front
Combat with the Covid-19 Epidemic. Critical Asian Studies 52 (4): 473–
493.
Lobanovska, M., and G. Pilla. 2017. Penicillin’s Discovery and Antibiotic Resis-
tance: Lessons for the Future? The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 90
(1): 135–145.
Londoño, E. 2020. Bolsonaro Hails Anti-Malaria Pill Even as He
Fights Coronavirus. The New York Times, July 8 [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/world/americas/brazil-
bolsonaro-covid-coronavirus.html. Accessed 9 Feb 2021.
MacLehose, L., M. McKee, and J. Weinberg. 2002. Responding to the Challenge
of Communicable Disease in Europe. Science 295 (5562): 2047.
MacNalty, A.S. 1952. International Sanitary Regulations. Nature 170 (4339):
1107–1108.
Marshall, M. 2020. How COVID-19 Can Damage the Brain. Nature 585: 342–
343.
McCall, B. 2020. COVID-19 and Artificial Intelligence: Protecting Health-Care
Workers and Curbing the Spread. The Lancet 2: e166–e167.
McNeill, J.R. 2010. Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean,
1620–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mougel, N. 2011. World War I Casualties. Reperes Centre Européen Robert
Schuman 4: 1–13.
MSF. 2014. Ebola in West Africa: Epidemic Requires Massive Deployment of
Resources [Online]. Available from: https://www.msf.org/ebola-west-africa-
epidemic-requires-massive-deployment-resources. Accessed 12 Aug.
156 M. FRAUNDORFER
MSF. 2015. Pushed to the Limit and Beyond: A Year Into the Largest Ever
Ebola Outbreak [Online]. Available from: https://www.msf.org/ebola-pus
hed-limit-and-beyond. Accessed 26 Mar 2021.
MSF. 2016. Emergency Logistics. [Online]. Available from: https://www.msf.
org.uk/emergency-logistics. Accessed 8 Aug 2020.
Nature. 2020. Coronavirus: The First Three Months as It Happened, April
22 [Online]. Available from: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-
00154-w. Accessed 9 Feb 2021.
Nunes, J. 2016. Ebola and the Production of Neglect in Global Health. Third
World Quarterly 37 (3): 542–556.
Patnaik, P. 2021. COVID-19 Vaccine Governance: Sidelining Multilateralism.
People’s Health Movement [Online]. Available from: https://phmovement.
org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Final_PHM_COVID-AND-GOVERN
ANCE-compressed.pdf. Accessed 9 Feb 2021.
Petrikova, I., J. Cole, and A. Farlow. 2020. COVID-19, Wet Markets, and
Planetary Health. The Lancet Planetary Health 4 (6): e213–e214.
Phelan, A.L., M. Eccleston-Turner, M. Rourke, A. Maleche, and C. Wang. 2020.
Legal Agreements: Barriers and Enablers to Global Equitable COVID-19
Vaccine Access. The Lancet (British Edition) 396 (10254): 800–802.
Porta, M., and J.M. Last. 2018. Germ Theory. In Oxford Dictionary of Public
Health, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Price-Smith, A.T. 2002. The Health of Nations: Infectious Disease, Environmental
Change, and Their Effects on National Security and Development. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Price-Smith, A.T. 2009. Contagion and Chaos: Disease, Ecology, and National
Security in the Era of Globalization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Reardon, S. 2014. Ebola Treatments Caught in Limbo. Nature 511 (7511):
520.
Roe, D., A. Dickman, R. Kock, E.J. Milner-Gulland, E. Rihoy, and M. ‘t Sas-
Rolfes. 2020. Beyond Banning Wildlife Trade: COVID-19, Conservation and
Development. World Development 136 (105121): 1–4.
Scheele, B.C., F. Pasmans, L.F. Skerratt, L. Berger, A. Martel, W. Beukema, A.A.
Acevedo, P.A. Burrowes, T. Carvalho, and A. Catenazzi. 2019. Amphibian
Fungal Panzootic Causes Catastrophic and Ongoing Loss of Biodiversity.
Science 363 (6434): 1459–1463.
Solomon, D. 2019. Brexit and Health Security: Why We Need to Protect Our
Global Networks. Journal of Public Health Policy 40 (1): 1–4.
Stieg, C. 2020. How This Canadian Start-Up Spotted Coronavirus Before
Everyone Else Knew About It. CNBC, March 3 [Online]. Available
from: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/bluedot-used-artificial-intellige
nce-to-predict-coronavirus-spread.html. Accessed 3 June 2021.
The White House. 2021. Letter to His Excellency António Guterres, January
20 [Online]. Available from: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/
statements-releases/2021/01/20/letter-his-excellency-antonio-guterres/.
Accessed 15 Feb 2021.
Tognotti, E. 2013. Lessons from the History of Quarantine, from Plague to
Influenza A. Emerging Infectious Diseases 19 (2): 254–259.
UN. 2019. Global Ebola Response [Online]. Available from: https://ebolaresp
onse.un.org/. Accessed 3 June 2021.
UNAIDS. 2021. Global HIV & AIDS Statistics—Fact Sheet [Online]. Available
from: https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet. Accessed 3 June
2021.
Van Staden, C. 2020. COVID-19 and the Crisis of National Development.
Nature Human Behaviour 4: 443–444.
Wald, P. 2008. Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative.
Durham: Duke University Press.
WHO. 2003a. Summary of Probable SARS Cases with Onset of Illness from
1 November 2002 to 31 July 2003 [Online]. Available from: https://www.
who.int/csr/sars/country/table2004_04_21/en/. Accessed 5 Aug 2020.
WHO. 2003b. World Health Organization Issues Emergency Travel Advisory
[Online]. Available from: https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/
2003/pr23/en/. Accessed 5 Aug 2021.
WHO. 2005. International Health Regulations [Online]. Available from:
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/43883/978924158
0410_eng.pdf?sequence=1. Accessed 12 Aug 2020.
WHO. 2010. Pandemic (H1N1) 2009—Update 101 [Online]. Available from:
https://www.who.int/csr/don/2010_05_21/en/. Accessed 30 July 2020.
WHO. 2014. WHO Virtual Press Conference following the Meeting of the
International Health Regulations Emergency Committee Regarding the 2014
Ebola Outbreak in West Africa [Online]. Available from: https://www.who.
int/mediacentre/multimedia/2014/who-ebola-outbreak-08aug2014.pdf?
ua=1. Accessed 12 Aug 2020.
WHO. 2015. Origins of the 2014 Ebola Epidemic [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/one-year-report/virus-
origin/en/. Accessed 3 June 2021.
WHO. 2016. Smallpox Vaccines, May 31 [Online]. Available from: https://
www.who.int/csr/disease/smallpox/vaccines/en/. Accessed 3 June 2021.
WHO. 2019. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV),
March 11 [Online]. Available from: https://www.who.int/news-room/
fact-sheets/detail/middle-east-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-(mers-cov).
158 M. FRAUNDORFER
WHO. 2020a. MERS Situation Update, January 2020 [Online]. Avail-

able from: http://www.emro.who.int/health-topics/mers-cov/mers-outbre
aks.html. Accessed 3 June 2021.
WHO. 2020b. Archived: WHO Timeline—COVID-19, April 27 [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://www.who.int/news/item/27-04-2020-who-timeline---
covid-19. Accessed 9 Feb 2021.
WHO. 2020c. ‘Solidarity’ Clinical Trial for COVID-19 Treatments [Online].
Available from: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-corona
virus-2019/global-research-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/solidarity-cli
nical-trial-for-covid-19-treatments. Accessed 9 Apr 2020.
WHO. 2020d. ‘Solidarity II’ Global Serologic Study for COVID-19 [Online].
Available from: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-corona
virus-2019/global-research-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/solidarity-2-glo
bal-serologic-study-for-covid-19. Accessed 9 Dec 2020.
WHO. 2020e. The Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator [Online].
Available from: https://www.who.int/initiatives/act-accelerator. Accessed 9
Feb 2021.
WHO. 2021a. Origin and Development of Health Cooperation [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://www.who.int/global_health_histories/background/en/.
WHO. 2021b. SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) [Online]. Available
from: https://www.who.int/ith/diseases/sars/en/. Accessed 3 June 2021.
WHO. 2021c. Ebola Virus Disease [Online]. Available from: https://www.who.
int/health-topics/ebola/#tab=tab_1. Accessed 23 Mar 2021.
WHO. 2021d. COVID-19 Technology Access Pool. Available from: https://
www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/global-res
earch-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/covid-19-technology-access-pool.
WHO. 2021e. WHO Director-General’s Opening Remarks at 148th Session
of the Executive Board, January 18. Available from: https://www.who.int/
director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-
148th-session-of-the-executive-board. Accessed 9 Feb 2021.
Wouters, O.J., K.C. Shadlen, M. Salcher-Konrad, A.J. Pollard, H.J. Larson, Y.
Teerawattananon, and M. Jit. 2021. Challenges in Ensuring Global Access to
COVID-19 Vaccines: Production, Affordability, Allocation, and Deployment.
The Lancet (British Edition) 397 (10278): 1023–1034.
Zacher, M., and T.J. Keefe. 2008. The Politics of Global Health Governance:
United by Contagion. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Zhang, L., and H. Wang. 2014. Forty Years of the War Against Ebola. Journal
of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE B 15 (9): 761–765.
Zhou, Y.R., and W.D. Coleman. 2016. Accelerated Contagion and Response:
Understanding the Relationships Among Globalization, Time, and Disease.
Globalizations 13 (3): 285–299.
Zhu, Y.-G., M. Gillings, P. Simonet, D. Stekel, S. Banwart, and J. Penuelas.
2017. Microbial Mass Movements. Science 357 (6356): 1099–1100.
Zhu, Y.G., M. Gillings, P. Simonet, D. Stekel, S. Banwart, and J. Penuelas. 2018.
Human Dissemination of Genes and Microorganisms in Earth’s Critical Zone.
Global Change Biology 24 (4): 1488–1499.
CHAPTER 5
Global Food Production
5.1 Global Food Production

in the Anthropocene
5.1.1 The Emergence of Industrialised and Globalised Agricultural
Production …
Seen from the International Space Station, curious geometric forms and
figures, strange circles and quadrangles and artificial rectangular shapes in
shades of brown and green capture the astronaut’s eye. Resembling the
granular image of pixelated photos, these artificial geometric forms scat-
tered all over the planet’s landmass are the most poignant evidence of how
humanity has radically reshaped the planet’s surface over the course of
the twentieth century. Zooming in on this entrancing dance of geometric
forms, it becomes clear that this assemblage of circles, quadrangles and
rectangles underpin the daily food supply of our globalised civilisation.
Industrial agricultural production has become one of the major drivers
of the Anthropocene, transforming our relationship with food and the
environment in unprecedented ways. When the twentieth century drew
to a close, one-third of the planet’s arable land had been transformed by
industrialised agriculture (McNeill 2001, 212), turning agriculture into
a planetary challenge. Human civilisations have depended on agriculture
and farming for thousands of years. But until 1900, the basic farming
methods had not fundamentally changed and principally relied on animal
and human muscle power—still in 1900, up to 90 per cent of the human

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88156-6_5
162 M. FRAUNDORFER
population was involved in farming—, multiple cropping and the use of

organic fertilisers, such as dung and crop residues (McNeill 2001, 215–
216).
This pattern, which had been relatively stable for thousands of years,
fundamentally changed in the twentieth century due to the emergence of
a set of novel technological innovations in Europe and North America.
In the late nineteenth century, the innovation of gasoline-fuelled trac-
tors gradually started to replace human and animal labour in the US.
Between 1920 and 1990, the use of tractors in agriculture rose from 0.3
to 26 million, with the most dramatic rise and its worldwide expansion
materialising after the end of the Second World War (McNeill 2001, 216–
217). The increasing mechanisation of agriculture was compounded by a
chemical revolution in the first decade of the twentieth century when the
German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch invented the Haber–Bosch
Process paving the way for the use of nitrogen fertilisers in agriculture.
This invention removed the natural limits of traditional agriculture and
facilitated large-scale agricultural production (Smil 2001, 61–108, 200).
At the same time, US farmers successfully created more productive and
disease-resistant crops through crossbreeding, commercialising the first
strains of hybrid corn (McNeill 2001, 220).
The use of nitrogen fertilisers in agricultural production represents one
of the major drivers of humanity’s exponential growth in the second half
of the twentieth century (Roser and Ritchie 2020a). Oil-fuelled mecha-
nisation, together with hybrid and genetically modified crops, as well as
the use of chemical fertilisers, completely reshaped agricultural practices.
These technologies made agricultural production entirely dependent on
fossil fuels, prioritising the growth of specialised crops (monocultures)
accompanied by the heavy use of chemical fertilisers and dramatically
decreasing the labour force. Between 1950 and 1998, the use of synthetic
fertilisers in agricultural production worldwide sharply increased tenfold.
And between the 1940s and the 1970s, the use of pesticides increased
40-fold (Clapp 2016, 53).
These developments favoured big grain-producing countries like the
US, Canada, Australia, Argentina and the USSR, which soon turned into
the world’s leading agricultural exporters. From the 1940s onwards, the
new logic of industrialised agriculture was exported to the developing
world in the form of The Green Revolution, globalising over the following
decades an agricultural system heavily relying on fossil fuels, mechanisa-
tion, international commodity chains, crop specialisation and genetically
5 GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION 163
modified crops infused with a narrative of production growth, efficiency

and profiteering (McNeill 2001, 219–227). Today, the food sector is
responsible for roughly 30 per cent of the world’s energy consumption
(Lang and Heasman 2016, 114).
This agricultural revolution has not only changed the way agriculture
is dominantly practised around the world. It has also shaped our ideas of
what food is supposed to be. When we go to a local supermarket, we can
buy bananas from Costa Rica, coffee from Brazil, avocados from Chile,
beef from Argentina, grapes from Israel, and so it goes almost indefi-
nitely. A chocolate bar might be locally manufactured, but its ingredients
like sugar, cocoa, palm oil, salt and others come from all over the world.
The dried cranberries, raisins, apricots and nuts in our breakfast muesli
are sourced from countries all around the globe. A local supermarket
today is anything but local. Grocery shopping has become a global affair.
And so have our eating habits. The ingredients of an average dish eaten
in Europe or North America travel around 2400 kilometres before they
finally “land” on our plates (Clapp 2016, 1). In other words, the char-
acteristics of globalised food production are edged into every bit of our
daily eating habits. And most of the time, we are only dimly aware that the
food products we buy in our local shops and supermarkets have travelled
thousands of kilometres, crossed several national borders and crisscrossed
vast oceans before we finally put them into our trolleys and carry them
home.
5.1.2 … And Its Devastating Consequences for the Earth-System

Agriculture has a critical impact on the climate, the integrity of the
biosphere, soil, freshwater and biogeochemical flows (Campbell et al.
2017; Lang and Heasman 2016, 102). In terms of biodiversity loss and
biogeochemical flows, agricultural production has already exceeded the
safe planetary boundaries, pushing the Earth-system ever closer to irre-
versible tipping points (Lang and Heasman 2016, 102). Roughly 33 per
cent of the world’s land surface and 75 per cent of freshwater resources
are devoted to crop or livestock production. Approximately 15,400 litres
of freshwater are needed to produce one kilo of beef; 10,000 litres for one
kilo of cotton; 1000 litres for one litre of milk; 2500 litres for one kilo
of rice; and 1600 litres for one kilo of wheat bread (Lang and Heasman
2016, 110).
164 M. FRAUNDORFER
Box 5.1: Global Food Production as a Hyperobject

With our weekly grocery shopping we are (willingly or unwillingly) impli-
cated in the global processes of food production, contributing to the
environmental devastation of the planet’s ecosystems, such as the Amazon
Rainforest or the rainforests in Indonesia, the degradation of fertile soil
through monocultures and heavily industrialised agricultural production,
the toxic pollution of rivers through fertilisers and other industrial waste, as
well as the loss of natural habitats and the extinction of non-human species
across the planet. For instance, by purchasing products containing palm oil
from Indonesia, we are indirectly implicated in the complex processes that
drive the accelerating disappearance of the orangutan from Indonesia’s
rainforests.
Our individual grocery shopping may have a neglectable impact on the
environment. But the actions of hundreds of millions of people doing
their weekly grocery shopping in the same way as I and you do sustain
the dominant dynamics and processes of the global food system, acceler-
ating environmental degradation across the globe, exacerbating the food
system’s unsustainable nature and further aggravating the global challenges
Crop production alone has increased by 300 per cent since 1970
(IPBES 2019). Agricultural expansion has affected almost every single
ecosystem on the planet. But tropical forests, those ecosystems which
are known for harbouring the highest levels of biodiversity, have dispro-
portionately suffered. Between 1980 and 2000, 100 million hectares of
tropical forest disappeared mainly due to cattle farming and soy produc-
tion in Latin America and palm-oil plantations in South-East Asia (IPBES
2019). Between 1961 and 2016, the global production of soybeans,
largely used as animal feed, increased from 27 to 335 million tonnes
(Heron et al. 2018, 31). Indonesia’s rainforests suffer from the highest
deforestation rates worldwide driven by the relentless growth of huge
palm-oil plantations whose palm oil ends up in hundreds of daily products
in our shops and supermarkets, including shampoo, lipstick, chocolate,
detergent and instant noodles (Tyson et al. 2018; WWF 2018).
The excessive use of nitrogen and phosphorus for chemical fertilisers
has entirely altered biogeochemical flows, such as the natural nitrogen and
phosphorus cycle, causing soil, water and air pollution and biodiversity
loss (Campbell et al. 2017; Lang and Ingram 2013, 97). The transfor-
mation of land for crop or cattle farming has severely degraded at least
23 per cent of land areas and contributed significantly to the extinction

of animal species worldwide. Since 1900, the number of native species
in land-based habitats has decreased by 20 per cent. And since 1970,
the number of invasive alien species per country has risen by 70 per
cent (IPBES 2019). Given the heavy use of chemical fertilisers and the
constant degradation of natural vegetation, insect populations all across
Europe have dramatically plummeted in the last few decades. As a knock-
on effect, disappearing insect populations will further harm the planet’s
biodiversity (Natural Geographic 2019).
The drive towards mechanisation, crop intensification and specialisa-
tion, as well as genetic modification, has enormously impoverished the
genetic diversity of domestic agricultural crops in the twentieth century,
which has dropped by 75 per cent. Merely 12 plant species and 15
mammal and bird species dominate agriculture today (Lang and Heasman
2016, 107). And, of course, agricultural expansion drives the emission
of tonnes of CO2 . The entire food system—including land-use change,
supply chains, the use of fertilisers, manufacture, agricultural produc-
tion, processing, transport, retail, household food management and waste
disposal—is responsible for up to 29 per cent of global CO2 emissions
(Campbell et al. 2017).
Its enormous amounts of food waste further undermine any argu-
ments in favour of this system’s economic efficiency. Approximately 30
per cent of all the food produced worldwide, about 1.3 billion tonnes
annually, is lost. Food losses occur at all stages of the food value chain,
including the production process, handling/storage and consumption.
Roughly 24 per cent of all the water used for agriculture is associated
with food loss. The cropland used to grow this food, which is even-
tually lost in the food value chain, equals roughly the size of Mexico
(Gustavsson et al. 2011, 4–5; Lipinski et al. 2013, 1, 7, 9, 24–25). In
North America and Oceania, up to 50 per cent of all the fish and seafood
harvested is wasted compared to roughly 30 per cent in other world
regions (Gustavsson et al. 2011, 8). In the same vein, 45 per cent of
all fruits and vegetables, 30 per cent of cereals and 20 per cent of meat
is wasted or lost at all stages of the food chain (agricultural production,
post-harvest, processing, distribution, consumption) (FAO 2019a). When
we consider that in the twentieth century alone humans took more fish
out of the oceans than ever before and that the overfishing marine catch
shot up from 2 million metric tonnes in 1900 to 74 million metric tonnes
in 1996 (McNeill 2001, 246–247), the global food system symbolises the
166 M. FRAUNDORFER
ruthless overexploitation of the oceans and their biodiversity; not to speak

of all the ecosystems, species and their natural habitats on land.
What might have been efficient from a purely economic point of view
in the first few decades after the Second World War has turned into a
destabilising threat to the Earth-system. Not only has the global food
system become hopelessly unsustainable; it also erodes the very pillars it
stands on (see also Box 5.1). Food production heavily relies on intact
ecosystems. After all, it is those very ecosystems that provide the condi-
tions for the growth of our food. Dramatically increasing soil degradation,
the ruthless overfishing of the oceans, the accelerating disappearance
of non-human animal species and the devastation of entire ecosystems
mark an unprecedented plundering of the planet’s natural resources at a
planetary scale (FAO 2019b).
5.2 The Global Food System

5.2.1 Its Colonial Roots
The global food system is not only an extraordinary ecological strain. It
has also entrenched huge social distortions and inequalities worldwide.
Despite (or because of) global commodity chains, 800 million people do
not have access to sufficient food. At the same time, roughly 2 billion
people suffer from overnutrition (obesity). The problem of obesity has
tripled since the mid-1970s, killing more people than undernutrition
(FAO et al. 2018; WHO 2018). The global food system has pushed
millions of local farmers into poverty, made local markets collapse and
turned agricultural workers into modern slaves, producing deep inequal-
ities between and within societies. At the same time, global commodity
chains have produced masses of cheap and unhealthy food, championed
by the US fast-food culture that gained momentum worldwide in the
second half of the twentieth century. The global food system dispro-
portionately benefits a tiny, but extremely powerful, group of corporate
actors, which have significantly shaped the way we think about food.
Simultaneously, agribusiness disadvantages millions of small-scale farmers
worldwide who are involved in ecological agriculture and produce, after
all, 70 per cent of the world’s food (Clapp 2016, 3).
This system did not come into existence overnight. Its seeds were
planted in colonial times. For centuries, the food trade has had a signif-
icant international and corporate component. European colonial powers
controlled the trade of “exotic” food products from their colonies in Latin
America, Africa and Asia through trading companies like the Dutch East
India Company, the Dutch West India Company or the British East India
Company, all of them set up in the early seventeenth century (Clapp
2016, 96). Then, agricultural products like sugar, cocoa, coffee, exotic
fruits or cotton were produced and shipped under the brutal conditions
of slave labour only to be relished by a highly privileged, aristocratic elite
in European countries (see Image 5.1 and Box 5.2).
Image 5.1 La Famille du duc de Penthièvre en 1768 ou La Tasse de Chocolat

[The Family of the Duke of Penthièvre Called la Tasse de Chocolat], Jean
Baptiste Charpentier, 1768 (Source Wikimedia Commons 2020)
168 M. FRAUNDORFER
Box 5.2: Echoes from the Past

This painting by the French portrait painter Jean Baptiste Charpentier
sophisticatedly encapsulates the origins of the meanings of power, domina-
tion and dependence in the global food system. Painted in the eighteenth
century, it depicts the aristocratic family of the Duke of Penthièvre, sitting
together for a cup of chocolote. Drinking chocolate turned into a luxury
pastime in aristocratic families. But this new drinking habit of the wealthy
and powerful in Europe was built on massive social exploitation and slave
labour in the colonies.
Let’s consider for a moment the proud glances, the dignified and
civilised postures of these elegant, beautiful and rococo-style family
members, frozen in time and staring at us from an era long gone by. And
now, fast forward two hundred and fifty years! Picture yourself sitting in a
coffee shop in any major European city today, nonchalantly drinking your
cup of hot chocolate (or latte, cappuccino or flat white) and listening to
some groovy jazz beats in the background. Do you still feel their glances
upon you? Do you still sense the gravitas of power, might and domination
that Charpentier’s brushstrokes so masterfully evoke?
5.2.2 International Cooperation on Agriculture

Intensified international cooperation on agriculture picked up in the late
nineteenth century, eventually amounting to the creation of the first
intergovernmental organisation on agriculture in 1905 in Rome: the
International Institute of Agriculture. The institute was set up by Euro-
pean powers to collect information and data on all aspects of the state of
agriculture (prices, diseases, farming systems, crops) to facilitate knowl-
edge exchange among European nations in the face of the challenges
posed by ever more intensified international agricultural trade (Mignemi
2017). Building on the legacy of the International Institute of Agri-
culture, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations
(FAO) was established in 1945 in Rome to push international coop-
eration on agriculture even further. As its name illustrates, the FAO
became the first international organisation to connect agriculture and
food, putting the fight against hunger as a moral obligation for states
on the international agenda (McKeon 2015, 13).
The first director-general of the FAO, Scottish nutritionist John Boyd
Orr, acted on this ambition and presented his idea of a World Food
Board to the organisation’s member states. In his vision, the World Food
Board should function as an international control mechanism to regu-
late food prices and control agricultural production and supplies through
food reserves. With this idea, the FAO would have received real executive
powers in order to regulate the world food market and reduce the volatili-
ties inherent in global food production processes. This idea, however, was
rejected by the leading powers at that time, Britain and the US, losing
out to the prevalence of national interests and the mantra of free trade
and agricultural production (Ribi Forclaz 2019, 352; Staples 2003; Way
2013, 292–296).
The leading powers’ suspicion of international regulation at the
expense of free trade and national interests set the stage for developing a
world food system that can be characterised by uneven agricultural trade
liberalisation and the financialisation and commodification of food. Since
Orr’s failed attempt at establishing the FAO as the principal authority to
regulate the world food system, the organisation has largely been rele-
gated to a technical role of collecting and distributing knowledge on
agriculture, hunger and food security (McKeon 2015, 14). Orr’s ambi-
tious ideas about international solidarity in the fight against malnutrition,
as well as his concerns about the detrimental impact of national and
corporate interests, are as prevalent today as they were seventy years ago.
Instead of the FAO, other international organisations have taken the lead
in the global food system. Since the 1970s, the World Bank (WB) and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), and in the 1990s the World Trade
Organisation (WTO), have become the principal international organisa-
tions to steer the global food system into a direction heavily dominated by
trade liberalisation, financialisation and commodification (McKeon 2015,
16, 18).
Beginning in the 1940s, the US sought to expand its export markets
for its surplus production. Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and
the Ford Foundation, the World Bank and the FAO, the US exported its
agricultural model to the developing world in an endeavour conveniently
termed The Green Revolution. Advertised as a global effort to eradi-
cate hunger and poverty, the Green Revolution brought technological
innovations in agricultural production (chemical fertilisers, crossbreeding
of crops, agricultural mechanisation) to developing countries, radically
globalising the mantra of highly industrialised agricultural production
(Clapp 2016, 38–45). The Green Revolution, which promised to solve
the problem of global hunger and poverty with the use of technology
170 M. FRAUNDORFER
and science, did increase agricultural production. But it did not address
the complex social problem of hunger and poverty. In many ways, the
Green Revolution deepened the social and economic divide between
large-scale and small-scale farmers, generating economic wealth for a
few farmers with large farms and big monoculture plantations, while
creating new social conflicts pushing peasants, local farmers and indige-
nous communities into precarious livelihoods (Harwood 2009; Shiva
1991; Sonnenfeld 1992). In the same vein, the Green Revolution was
anything but “green”, globalising an agricultural model which thrives on
environmental destruction.
The Green Revolution was primarily led by governments and focused
on technological innovation. In the 1970s and 1980s, the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund stepped in to reinforce the glob-
alisation of the market-driven approach to food and agriculture. Both
organisations offered financial and technical support to heavily indebted
developing countries through structural adjustment programmes, which
forced developing countries to introduce neoliberal economic policies,
removing taxes and tariffs on imports and exports, privatising state-owned
enterprises, reducing the role of the state in agricultural policies and
opening their markets to foreign investment. As a consequence, devel-
oping countries were flooded by cheap agricultural products from leading
agricultural exporters. Powerful agricultural companies turned seeds into
their intellectual property, undermining local markets and ecologically
sustainable food value chains and pushing local farmers into poverty
(Clapp 2016, 14, 62–65; McKeon 2015, 18).
This system was legally entrenched through the creation of the WTO
and the 1994 Agreement on Agriculture (McKeon 2015, 20). Agricul-
ture, thus, became an essential part of international trade rules, with the
Agreement creating a legal basis for the uneven trade rules in agricul-
ture, which massively benefitted agricultural exporters from the developed
world and severely disadvantaged countries and societies in the developing
world (Clapp 2016, 62, 67, 71).
The globalisation of industrialised agriculture and aggressive trade
liberalisation was compounded by an ever more invasive role of finan-
cial actors. Agricultural commodity futures markets are a centuries-old
phenomenon used by farmers as protection against volatile food prices.
But the aggressive move towards the financialisation of food since the
1980s has been supported by the deliberate undoing of regulations,
allowing financial investors to speculate on agricultural products and rake
in enormous profits. Financial speculation, in turn, drives up food prices

and empowers transnational food companies and retailers, with all the
detrimental impact rising food prices have on local farmers, local markets
and poorer societies (Clapp 2016, 16, 133; Isakson 2014). Financial spec-
ulation plays a major role in the volatility of global food prices and was
one of the key drivers that led to rocketing global food prices during the
2007/08 global food crisis (Chadwick 2017; Clapp 2014; Ghosh 2010).
Both trade liberalisation and unregulated financial speculation have rigged
the entire system in favour of transnational companies that today domi-
nate all aspects of the food chain as food producers, processors and
retailers. They set prices and private standards, put pressure on govern-
ments to act in their favour and shape the public debate by constantly
emphasising the benefits of the productivist mantra and downplaying the
enormous social and environmental costs inherent in this approach (Clapp
2016, 122–130).
These developments have transformed food into something abstract
and detached, severing any tangible relationship between food, its origins,
the environment and us. The daily mass slaughtering of farm animals, for
example, takes place in distant and highly mechanised slaughterhouses.
Food staples like corn/maize, soy or rice are grown on massive plan-
tations often far away from our urbanised centres. Farming itself has
become a highly mechanised activity entirely disconnected from our daily
(sub)urban lives. Still one hundred years ago, before the advent of the
technological revolution of agricultural production, the life of almost
every citizen was dominated by agriculture. Today, only a small minority
of citizens are employed in agricultural production (McNeill 2001, 215–
216). Food has turned into a mere mass product, or commodity, that can
be traded and sold, shipped and distributed, invested in and speculated
on (Clapp 2016, 19–21).
5.2.3 The Globalisation of Livestock and Soybean Production

The inherent logic of the global food system can be most poignantly
exemplified by zooming in on the intricacies of meat and soybean produc-
tion, the main drivers of industrial agriculture since the end of the Second
World War.
172 M. FRAUNDORFER
5.2.3.1 The Environmental Impact of Meat

An expensive and luxury food product for most people until the end of
the Second World War, and only enjoyed on rare occasions, meat has
turned into a globalised mass product and has found its way into the
daily diet of billions of people worldwide. After the Second World War,
meat consumption almost doubled from 23.09 kg to 43.22 kg (between
1961 and 2013). Since the 1950s, global meat production has seen
an unprecedented leap, rapidly climbing from 71.36 million tonnes to
317.85 million tonnes between 1961 and 2014, while in Asia alone meat
production has increased 15-fold since 1961.
Meat production involves the merciless mass slaughtering of farm
animals. Every day millions of farm animals are killed, gassed and slaugh-
tered to end up as sausages, minced meat, steak or meatballs. Our
food habits are sustained by daily bloodbaths soaked in animal pain and
suffering. Between 1961 and 2014, the slaughtering of pigs rose from
376.37 million to 1.47 billion, sheep from 330.90 million to 545.08
million, cattle from 172.96 million to 300.07 million and turkeys from
141.62 million to 648.74 million. And the number of chickens slaugh-
tered for meat has risen from 6.58 billion to a staggering 62.01 billion.
The same holds for the rise in the numbers of global livestock. The
number of chickens, for example, skyrocketed from 3.91 billion to an
incredible 21.41 billion in the last fifty years (Ritchie and Roser 2017).
Today, roughly 40 per cent of the worldwide agricultural gross domestic
product is attributed to the livestock sector, the single largest anthro-
pogenic land user. Approximately 70 per cent of all agricultural land is
occupied by livestock production, which accounts for 30 per cent of the
planet’s land surface (FAO 2006b, xx–xxi).
These developments have turned livestock and meat production into
a major source of human-induced transformations of the Earth-system.
About 30 per cent of the water footprint attributed to agriculture relates
to livestock production. Approximately 15,000 litres of water are needed
for 1 kg of beef; 8800 litres for 1 kg of sheep/goatmeat; 6000 litres for
1 kg of pig meat; 4300 litres for 1 kg of chicken meat. In comparison,
1 kg of cereals requires 1600 litres of water; 1 kg of vegetables requires
320 litres of water (Hoekstra 2017, 21, 24).
Livestock production has also considerably changed the biosphere.
The technological innovations of the 1940s in the US and Britain to
produce penicillin in large quantities drove the industrialisation of live-
stock farming, using antibiotics on a large scale in farm animals as growth
promoters. The massive use of antibiotics in livestock production facili-

tated the emergence of anti-resistant strains as well as new diseases and
epidemics among humans and non-human animals, such as avian flu
(H5N1) and swine flu (H1N1) (Greger 2017; Nunan 2017).
The livestock sector is responsible for the emission of 9 per cent of all
anthropogenic CO2 emissions (mostly from deforestation), 37 per cent
of anthropogenic methane (mostly from fermentation by ruminants), 65
per cent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide (mostly from manure)—which
has almost 300 times the global warming potential of CO2 —and 64 per
cent of anthropogenic ammonia, a key factor in causing acid rain and the
acidification of ecosystems (FAO 2006b, xxi). The depressing images of
deforestation poignantly capture the most visible damages of the livestock
sector to the biosphere. In Latin America, one of the worldwide hotspots
of meat production, roughly 70 per cent of the Amazon’s deforested areas
have been turned into pastures (FAO 2006b, xxi). In the US, the leading
country in beef, buffalo and poultry production, livestock contributes
to about 55 per cent of soil erosion, 37 per cent of all pesticide use,
50 per cent of antibiotic use and a third in the pollution of freshwater
resources through nitrogen and phosphorus in the country (FAO 2006b,
xxii; Ritchie and Roser 2017). Worldwide, livestock represents a major
threat to the stability of the planet’s ecosystems (FAO 2006b, xxiii).
5.2.3.2 The Growth and Globalisation of the Meat Trade

After the Second World War, the international meat trade unfolded in
an environment where agricultural powers like the US, the European
Economic Community and others promoted and protected their farm
(and meat) industries through strong subsidies. Powerful countries like
the US were extremely suspicious of international regulations to open
their markets to competitors from other countries. Several attempts were
made by the FAO and in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT) trade negotiations to reduce the many trade distortions caused
by the protectionist measures of the world’s agricultural superpowers.
Most of these attempts largely failed or were undermined by counter-
measures introduced by the US and the European Economic Community
(Perren 2006, 171–187). Towards the end of the twentieth century, free
trade agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), became a popular mechanism to maintain US dominance in
the international meat trade, benefitting the export of the US excess
174 M. FRAUNDORFER
production of meat through reduced or eliminated tariffs and quotas

(Fields et al. 2018).
While until the end of the twentieth century, OECD countries were
the undisputed leaders in meat production and consumption, this picture
has started to change since the 1990s. Countries like Brazil, China and
India have caught up, turning into the principal drivers of meat produc-
tion and further accelerating this meat-feeding frenzy. Annual per capita
consumption of meat doubled from 14 to 28 kg between 1980 and 2002,
with total meat supply tripling from 47 million tonnes to 137 million
tonnes over the same period (FAO 2006b, 15). China was responsible
for more than half of the rise in total meat production in the developing
world, with Asia as the world region accounting for the biggest growth in
meat production since the 1990s (from 50.91 million tonnes to 135.71
million tonnes between 1990 and 2014) (FAO 2006b, 16; Ritchie and
Roser 2017). In comparison, meat production in Europe decreased from
63.89 million tonnes to 59.37 million tonnes between 1990 and 2014
(Ritchie and Roser 2017).
The international meat trade is dominated by a select group of
immensely powerful companies. Today’s most powerful meat company
is JBS from Brazil, followed by Tyson and Cargill from the US (Sharma
2018). In 2007, JBS acquired Swift & Company, which as part of the
so-called Big Four US meatpacking companies (Armour & Company,
Swift & Company, Morris & Company and Hammond & Company)
had pioneered in the early 1900s what had become the blueprint of the
international meat industry, dominating the US meatpacking industry for
more than a century (Specht 2019, 5–13). Today, JBS not only domi-
nates the global meat trade. The Brazilian company also controls meat
processing in the US (Sharma and Schlesinger 2017). These three domi-
nant meat companies alone—JBS, Tyson and Cargill—account for more
CO2 emissions than a country like France (GRAIN et al. 2017).
These companies regularly make headlines because of their uneth-
ical, illegal and blatantly criminal activities. JBS, for example, is involved
in money-laundering schemes, price-fixing, cases of slave labour, land-
grabbing and devastating environmental destruction in the Amazon
Rainforest (Wasley et al. 2019a, b). Cargill’s list of anti-social, envi-
ronmentally destructive and criminal activities is no less impressive and
includes price-fixing, tax evasion, food poisoning, child and slave labour,
land-grabbing and the violent intimidation of local communities. The
company is also accused of causing environmental disasters, including
deforestation and the pollution of rivers and other ecosystems through

toxic waste (Mighty Earth 2019).
5.2.3.3 The Soybean: The Meat Trade’s Best Friend

The massive expansion of meat production after the Second World War
in the US and the OECD world and its colossal acceleration in the
developing world since the 1990s would not have been possible without
soy and corn/maize. The traditional feeding of livestock was based on
locally sourced animal feed that would otherwise not have been used for
food, such as crop waste (FAO 2006b, 12). Industrial livestock produc-
tion, however, heavily depends on food crops as animal feed. Hence,
in the shadows of the globalised livestock sector another highly glob-
alised commodity has gradually emerged with its very own international
trade structures and globalised commodity chains. Between 1950 and
2009/10, global soybean production skyrocketed from 17 million tonnes
to about 250 million tonnes (The Nature Conservancy 2012, 5). And the
soybean production area expanded by 400 per cent between 1961 and
2009 (Oliveira 2016, 355). Today, roughly one-third of the global cereal
harvest is fed to livestock (FAO 2006b, 12). Almost the entire global
soybean harvest is crushed to soybean meal and oil. The soybean meal is
then used as animal feed, while humans consume soybean meal indirectly
through the end products of the livestock production (dairy products,
meat, eggs, farmed fish) (The Nature Conservancy 2012, 5). The direct
consumption of soybeans through tofu, meat substitutes, soy sauce and
other soy products represents a negligible percentage of the total soybean
harvest (The Nature Conservancy 2012, 5).
While the soybean is originally from China, the US rapidly estab-
lished itself as the unrivalled leader in soybean production after the
Second World War. Since the 1970s, the global soybean industry has
become slightly more diversified, with Brazil and Argentina rivalling US
dominance in the sector. Today, the US, Brazil and Argentina are respon-
sible for 90 per cent of global soybean exports and about four-fifths
of global soybean production (The Nature Conservancy 2012, 6). The
US, however, has held on to its position as the overall hegemon in the
sector due to the US dollar as the dominant currency of the interna-
tional soybean trade, the Chicago Board of Trade as the principal platform
for price-setting and financial trading in the sector, as well as several US
companies that dominate the soybean market. The US companies Archer-
Daniels-Midland, Cargill and Bunge together with the Rotterdam-based
176 M. FRAUNDORFER
company Louis Dreyfus control 80 per cent of the international soybean

trade (Oliveira 2016, 349).
Needless to say that the soybean sector plays a crucial role in the
US economy, contributing to employment statistics, economic growth
and the GDP. For developing countries like Brazil and Argentina, whose
economies depend almost entirely on agricultural exports, a commodity
like soybeans is like a deep gold mine. Apart from Brazil’s position as
a leading exporter of several other agricultural products (meat, sugar,
coffee, orange juice), soybeans have turned into the most important
commodity of Brazil’s agroindustry and have geostrategic relevance for
Brazil’s power projections in the international system (Oliveira 2016,
348). Since Asia, particularly China, has turned into the principal driver
of meat consumption globally, the power balance in the international
soybean trade has been shifting to the south and the east. China
has surpassed the US as Brazil’s principal trading partner, with Brazil
exporting more than half of its soybeans to China (The Nature Conser-
vancy 2012, 8–9). Today, Brazil, Argentina and China produce more than
half of all soybeans worldwide (Oliveira and Schneider 2016, 172).
Given the deep interdependencies between the soybean and livestock
trade today, it is not surprising that the US, Brazil, Argentina and China
are the principal players in both sectors (Ritchie and Roser 2017). But
these very same interdependencies only deepen the impact these glob-
alised industries have on the Earth-system. This mutually reinforcing
impact is most evident in Brazil. The livestock and soybean industries
represent the principal threats to three of the most important ecosystems
in South America and worldwide: the Amazon as the planet’s largest rain-
forest, the Pantanal as the planet’s largest wetlands and the Cerrado as
South America’s largest savannah. With 20 per cent of the Amazon defor-
ested, largely to make place for cattle farms and crop fields, this ecosystem
is rapidly approaching a climate tipping point, with dire consequences
for the regional and global climate (Solinge and Kuijpers 2013, 202).
The excessive use of fertilisers further aggravates the problem, causing
massive water and soil pollution (Solinge and Kuijpers 2013, 206). After
all, soy production accounts for more than half of all the pesticides used
in Brazilian agriculture (Bombardi 2017, 24).
5.3 Alternatives to the Dominant

Dynamics of the Global Food System
The global expansion of agricultural production in the twentieth century
was dominantly marked by the theme of productivism (McKeon 2015,
71–72), which hailed technology and industrial agricultural production
as the panacea to many social and political ills of the world, including
global poverty and hunger. In this model, small-scale farmers, local agri-
culture, self-sufficient communities as well as attitudes of respect for the
wealth of the planet’s biodiversity were regarded as obstacles to progress.
Ironically, rather than solving the world’s social and political ills, indus-
trial agricultural production has exacerbated them, producing a new host
of even more challenging social, environmental and political ills.
The 1990s witnessed a further acceleration of these developments
through the establishment of the World Trade Organisation and the adop-
tion of the Agreement on Agriculture, which legally entrenched uneven
and unfair agricultural trade rules. Concurrently, the global expansion of
industrial agriculture was further fed by the promises of the biotechnology
revolution. The introduction of genetically modified crops and farm
animals further deepened the productivist paradigm of global agricultural
production. In 1996, scientists at the University of Edinburgh made inter-
national headlines for cloning the sheep Dolly, the first mammal and farm
animal cloned from an adult cell; a technology that was soon to be used
to clone other farm animals and improve the efficiency of livestock (The
University of Edinburgh 2016).
In the same year, the US introduced the first genetically modified crops
(GM crops) to improve the efficiency of crop yields, another technology
that quickly spread around the world and took the agroindustrial commu-
nity by storm (Khush 2012). For example, 96.5 per cent of Brazil’s
entire soy production is based on genetically modified crops (Bombardi
2017, 35). Genetically modified crops are highly controversial. Originally
promoted to tackle global hunger, food insecurity and the environmental
impact of agricultural production, it has increasingly become clear that
GM crops have serious side effects which can tragically exacerbate already
existing problems. On many occasions, GM crops have caused new resis-
tances among weeds and insects, which, in turn, require the use of even
more chemicals in the form of pesticides and insecticides, further intoxi-
cating the food chain (and our daily meals) (Benbrook 2012; Perry et al.
2016).
178 M. FRAUNDORFER
Between 2000 and 2014, the use of pesticides in Brazil’s industrial

agriculture, which heavily relies on GM crops, increased by 135 per cent
from 170,000 tonnes to 500,00 tonnes (Bombardi 2017, 33–35). Of
the 96.5 per cent of Brazil’s genetically modified crops, about 37 per
cent show traits of herbicide resistance and approximately 60 per cent
show traits of insect and herbicide resistance (Cattelan and Dall’Agnol
2018, 10). Genetically modified crops have also impoverished the range
of food crops to such a degree that industrial agriculture today is domi-
nated by just four genetically modified crops: soybeans with 50 per cent,
corn/maize with 30 per cent, cotton with 14 per cent and canola with 5
per cent (Clapp 2016, 55–57).
Amid the further acceleration of the techno-productivist logic, the
1990s also witnessed the emergence of entirely new dynamics that seri-
ously questioned and challenged the dominant logic of the global food
system for the first time in decades. International organisations like the
FAO regained a more proactive stance on rights-based approaches to food
security; NGOs and social movements started to mobilise transnationally
to stand up to corporate interests, transnational companies and large-scale
agricultural industry; and the rise of countries from the developing world
also shifted the international agenda towards approaches that revived the
vision of the first FAO Director-General John Boyd Orr that food was
more than a mere commodity.
5.3.1 Case Study 1: Food Security, Food Sovereignty and Food Justice
5.3.1.1 Food Security
The fight against hunger in the world became a matter of urgency during
the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome (World Food Summit 1996).
The international community called into life the ambitious World Food
Summit Goal with the objective of halving the number of undernourished
people by 2015. A few years later, in the 2000 Millennium Development
Declaration the international community agreed on a second goal in the
form of UN Millennium Development Goal 1 by dedicating efforts to
halving the proportion of undernourished people by 2015.
Box 5.3: Definition of Food Security

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic
access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and
food preferences for an active and healthy life.
This definition comprises the following four dimensions:

Food availability: The availability of sufficient quantities of food of
appropriate quality, supplied through domestic production or imports
(including food aid).
Food access: Access by individuals to adequate resources […] for
acquiring appropriate foods for a nutritious diet.
Utilization: Utilization of food through adequate diet, clean water,
sanitation and health care to reach a state of nutritional well-being where
all physiological needs are met.
Stability: To be food secure, a population, household or individual must
have access to adequate food at all times. They should not risk losing access
to food as a consequence of sudden shocks (e.g. an economic or climatic
crisis) or cyclical events (e.g. seasonal food insecurity).
Source FAO (2006a).
This renewed attention placed on global food security (see Box 5.3)
has been accompanied by increased efforts to codify the human right to
food. In its Article 11, the 1966 International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights recognised “the fundamental right of everyone
to be free from hunger”, confirming governments’ responsibility “[t]o
improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food”
(ICESCR 1966). At the 1996 World Food Summit, FAO member states
requested a further specification of Article 11, which in 1999 resulted
in Comment 12 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (CESCR). Comment 12 outlines and specifies states’ obligation
in guaranteeing food security and realising the right to adequate food
(ECOSOC 1999).
In 2000, the UN Human Rights Commission established the posi-
tion of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food with the mandate
of monitoring the realisation of the right to food in the world. Between
2002 and 2004, FAO member states negotiated a set of Voluntary Guide-
lines to contribute to the progressive realisation of the right to adequate
food (FAO 2005). These guidelines serve governments as a non-legally
180 M. FRAUNDORFER
binding practical tool to develop their own public policies and strategies
directed towards the progressive realisation of the human right to food.
The concept of food security is contested. Most of the criticism levelled
at the concept of food security holds that food security entrenches
and reproduces the existing dominant logic of the global food system.
While the concept regained attention in the 1990s, little seems to have
changed in terms of reducing hunger, poverty and malnutrition despite
a significant push for cutting-edge technology, the integration of genetic
engineering and ever more efficient production methods. The number
of undernourished people remains relatively stable and dropped only
slightly from approximately 1 billion people in 1991 to around 820
million people in 2020 (Roser and Ritchie 2020b). And the number
of 820 million undernourished people worldwide has been stable since
2010. At the same time, the prevalence of undernourished people has
been stagnating since 2010 at around 11 per cent of the world popula-
tion (FAO et al. 2019, 6). This is not necessarily what groundbreaking
success looks like, even though the dominant actors in the global
food system have constantly hailed the use of genetic engineering and
cutting-edge technology in agricultural production as groundbreaking
and paradigm-changing, among other superlatives.
5.3.1.2 Food Sovereignty

The term of food sovereignty represents a more substantial break with
the dominant logic of agricultural production. Food sovereignty shifts
the focus of agricultural production to the local level, with local farmers
regaining control over food production. Since the early 1990s, the global
peasant movement La Via Campesina has become the principal advo-
cate of this concept (see also Box 5.4), supporting local peasants, farmers
and farmers’ communities across the world in local, ecologically sustain-
able and democratic food production processes. In other words, food
sovereignty embraces an idea of agricultural production that has been
constantly sidelined and marginalised in the global food system.
In this context, La Via Campesina fights against the commodifica-
tion of food, cheap food prices, monoculture, large-scale industrial food
production and international trade rules entrenched by the WTO and the
Agreement on Agriculture. The movement stands up for the hundreds
of millions of land workers, small-scale farmers and indigenous people
who produce most of the world’s food but are exploited and sidelined
by multinational companies and governments of powerful agricultural

countries (Martínez-Torres and Rosset 2010).
Box 5.4: La Via Campesina’s Definition of Food Sovereignty

Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appro-
priate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods,
and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the
aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at
the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets
and corporations. It defends the interests and inclusion of the next genera-
tion. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade
and food regime, and directions for food, farming, pastoral and fisheries
systems determined by local producers and users. Food sovereignty priori-
tises local and national economies and markets and empowers peasant and
family farmer-driven agriculture, artisanal-fishing, pastoralist-led grazing, and
food production, distribution and consumption based on environmental,
social and economic sustainability.
Source La Via Campesina (2007).
La Via Campesina, originally founded in Belgium in 1993, brings

together peasant movements from countries worldwide to fight for the
principal tenets of food sovereignty and against dominant food produc-
tion processes. As a global grassroots movement, La Via Campesina has
come to represent a global force of all those marginalised voices that
are victims of the sheer financial, economic and political power of food
companies and governments of agricultural exporting countries. With
more than 180 peasant organisations in 81 countries and more than two
hundred million peasants united by La Via Campesina, the movement has
turned into the most powerful force for change in the global food system
(La Via Campesina, n.d). Highly decentralised, all participating peasant
organisations maintain their autonomy, and decision-making is facilitated
through a long process of consultation and consensus-seeking. Lacking
a permanent headquarters like typical NGOs, La Via Campesina’s overall
direction is defined through an International Coordinating Committee, a
rotating secretariat and International Conferences (Martínez-Torres and
Rosset 2010, 164–165).
La Via Campesina works as a global platform for peasants from
different countries and world regions to meet, exchange ideas, campaign,
182 M. FRAUNDORFER
and oppose companies and national governments across national bound-

aries. Historically rooted in Latin and Central America, peasant move-
ments from this region play a dominant role. One of the most influential
peasant movements within La Via Campesina is the Brazilian Land-
less Workers’ Movement (MST). In Brazil, the MST has historically
confronted Brazilian agribusiness and the country’s patriarchal power
structures, fighting for the rights of indigenous people, land workers
and small farmers. MST set up agricultural schools where students
from peasant organisations from Brazil, other Latin American countries
and world regions can learn about alternative concepts of agricultural
production and mobilisation and organisational skills. MST and other
peasant organisations meet in training camps, farmers’ programmes,
workshops and conferences to build a common transnational peasant
identity (Martínez-Torres and Rosset 2010, 161–164; Schwendler and
Thompson 2017; Wittman 2009, 816–817).
The concept of food sovereignty is not entirely free from criticism.
Several critics argue that a food system based on the tenets of food
sovereignty would be unable to feed today’s world population. The
extraordinary expansion and development of humanity over the past
century is intrinsically tied to the techno-productivist farming logic. While
the concept of food sovereignty almost exclusively embraces the self-
provisioning of farmers, households and communities, it is unclear how
the concept relates to those hundreds of millions of consumers who are
not involved in farming. How can the idea of self-sufficient and self-
sustainable farming be scaled up to the national and international levels,
particularly in urban spaces (Bernstein 2014, 1039–1052)?
Today, 55 per cent of the world population lives in cities or urban areas,
which is projected to rise to 68 per cent by 2050 (UN 2018). Suppose
the food sovereignty movement aims to challenge the foundation of the
global food system effectively. In that case, it needs to find a way to win
over the state, an actor that has been deeply complicit in the evolution of
the corporate food system (Bernstein 2014, 1054). The food sovereignty
concept derives its radical power from an idealised distinction between
industrial farming and family/small-scale/agroecological peasant farming,
local production versus global and corporate production, sustainable agri-
culture versus unsustainable agriculture and so forth (Bernstein 2014,
1055). In reality, these boundaries are often far less clear-cut than food
sovereignty activists might be prepared to admit. Small-scale farming
represents itself as a complex universe of highly fragmented farming and
production methods. Some small-scale farmers may indeed adhere to the

principles of agroecology, while others use pesticides, chemical fertilisers
and GM crops; others may make inefficient use of their land and the
resources they have access to; some may produce their food locally while
others produce food for export as agricultural commodity, relying on
market-driven dynamics (Edelman et al. 2014, 915–922).
The examples in the following sections illustrate this complexity.
The US-based food justice movement combines ideas from the food
sovereignty movement with market-driven production methods. Brazil’s
Zero Hunger strategy shows that the effective and successful implemen-
tation of local, inclusive and democratic food production at the national
level is only possible through compromise and negotiation. Far from the
radical solutions championed by the food sovereignty movement, Brazil’s
Zero Hunger strategy combined conventional market-driven dynamics
with some of the inspiring ideas encapsulated in the concept of food
sovereignty. And the output of the Committee on World Food Security,
supported by La Via Campesina and many other food sovereignty organi-
sations across the world, also represents a compromise between the radical
ideas contained in the concept of food sovereignty on the one hand and
the interests of states and international organisations on the other hand.
5.3.1.3 Food Justice

Given different political and social realities in the global north, the food
sovereignty movement has not established itself in Europe and North
America in the same way as it did in countries in the global south, partic-
ularly Latin America. The food justice movement in the US represents
an example of how the global food system is challenged by NGOs, civil
society and community groups in the global north (see also Box 5.5).
Box 5.5: Just Food’s Definition of Food Justice

For the New York-based non-profit organisation Just Food “Food Justice
is communities exercising their right to grow, sell, and eat healthy food.
Healthy food is fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally-appropriate, and
grown locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers, and
animals. People practicing food justice leads to a strong local food system,
self-reliant communities, and a healthy environment”.
Source Rowe (2016).
184 M. FRAUNDORFER
The food justice movement is less radical than the food sovereignty
movement and aims to strike a balance between local food production
and the reliance on market forces. The US-based food justice movement
exposes one of the many inconvenient truths ingrained in the global food
system. How is it that in one of the world’s richest countries around 15
per cent of its population is food insecure? How can it be that one-third
of children and one half of the adult population in the US are obese
or overweight, with most of them from low-income and marginalised
communities?
As a response to these questions, the food justice movement primarily
focuses on issues of race, social class and gender as key drivers of food
injustice, as experienced by African Americans and Hispanics in the US
(Clendenning et al. 2016, 170; Farthing and Romer 2016; Romer 2014,
6). The food justice movement focuses its attention on urban spaces and
seeks to promote local agricultural production through farmers’ markets,
rural–urban food buying groups, cooperatives, community gardens and
community-supported agriculture, which allow short supply chains and
the support of local farmers from the region (Clendenning et al. 2016,
170; Farthing and Romer 2016).
Hence, the food justice movement embraces an agricultural model
that prioritises ecologically sustainable, democratic, local and culturally
appropriate production systems resisting factory-farming and corporate
control in agriculture (Romer 2014, 6–7). For example, several cities
have developed food procurement models that supply schools with local
farmers’ food produce (Farthing and Romer 2016). In this respect,
food sovereignty and food justice movements complement each other by
challenging the corporate model of the global food system.
Critics, however, point out that due to its reliance on market-based
mechanisms, the movement falls short of achieving real structural change
in the global food system, focusing too much on a privileged middle-
class clientele that can “afford niche products” (Clendenning et al. 2016,
170). The different approaches and angles of both movements are rooted
in different social, political and economic realities. The food sovereignty
movement has particularly been spurred on by peasant organisations in
Latin America which have been fighting for agrarian reform and peasants’
rights in large rural spaces. The food justice movement focuses on food
injustices unfolding in marginalised and impoverished neighbourhoods of
major US cities and other cities in high-income countries.
5.3.2 Case Study 2: The Role of the State: Brazil’s Zero Hunger
Strategy
As a leading agricultural producer, Brazil has a major role to play in the
global food system—for better or worse. Brazil has become an agricultural
superpower because Brazilian governments and its powerful agroindustry
accepted the dominant rules of the global food game. But despite Brazil’s
natural abundance of food, large parts of Brazilian society have historically
suffered from malnutrition and food insecurity. And this absurd situa-
tion did not change after Brazil’s transformation into a global agricultural
powerhouse. In this regard, Brazil represents a microcosm of the global
food system. Notwithstanding Brazil’s heavy investment in modern and
high-tech agricultural production since the 1980s, the situation of food
insecurity improved only slightly. In 2002, more than 20 million people,
roughly 11 per cent of Brazil’s population, lived in extreme poverty, and
more than 50 million people suffered from hunger (Fraundorfer 2018,
85).
This paradoxical situation only started to change markedly in 2003,
when a government came to power that took the historical realities of
extreme poverty and food insecurity in the country seriously. In 2003,
the newly elected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva introduced a
national programme, the Zero Hunger strategy, to turn the fight against
hunger and poverty into a top priority of his government. And its results
unfolding over the following decade were groundbreaking both for Brazil
and the world. By lifting around 40 million Brazilians out of poverty
between 2003 and 2016, the Workers’ Party governments under Lula
da Silva and his successor Dilma Rousseff successfully eradicated hunger
in Brazil (Graziano da Silva 2019, 5). To honour this historic achieve-
ment, in 2014 the FAO removed the country from the FAO Hunger
Map, which measures the prevalence of food insecurity in the world (FAO
2020); a historic triumph for Brazil which would have been unimaginable
before Lula da Silva came to power.
After this landmark success, Brazil’s Zero Hunger strategy spread
around the world, inspiring international organisations, governments,
NGOs and social movements around the globe and pointing towards a
new way of how to achieve food security. The Zero Hunger strategy also
helped Brazil meet most of the UN Millennium Development Goals by
2015 and shape the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 2, appropriately
titled “Zero Hunger” (Elver 2019, 98, 103). The Zero Hunger strategy
186 M. FRAUNDORFER
vividly illustrated how the human right to food could be successfully

promoted in a national context. It also strongly inspired the negotiations
of the 2004 FAO Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Real-
isation of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food
Security (Voluntary Guidelines) (Elver 2019, 104). Thus, Brazil set the
tone for tackling hunger and food insecurity in the first two decades of
the twenty-first century.
What was so unique about Brazil’s Zero Hunger strategy? The Zero
Hunger strategy was developed in collaboration between civil society
actors and the government to set up a comprehensive, integrated, inclu-
sive and multisectoral response to the multidimensional challenge of
hunger through family agriculture, income generation and intensive civil
society participation at all governance levels. More than 30 comple-
mentary programmes were developed under the umbrella of the Zero
Hunger strategy of which the largest are the Bolsa Familia Programme
(a nation-wide cash-transfer programme supporting low-income fami-
lies), the Food Acquisition Programme (local distribution of food from
family farmers), the School Meal Programme (provision of school meals),
the Programme for the Strengthening of Family Agriculture (provision
of financial and technical support for family farmers) and the Cistern-
Building Programme (building cisterns to collect rainwater for domestic
use in the semi-arid region of Brazil’s Northeast).
These programmes were legally entrenched by the National System of
Food and Nutrition Security, which legally guaranteed the basic principles
underlying the Zero Hunger strategy: the universal access to adequate
food, respect for human dignity, social participation in the formulation,
implementation and monitoring of programmes and public policies on
food and nutrition security, as well as the use of public and private
resources. The School Feeding Law of 2009 effectively exemplifies the
complementarity of most of the programmes. For example, the law consti-
tuted that at least 30 per cent of the purchase for the National School
Meal Programme ought to be derived from local family agriculture,
thereby reinforcing the Food Acquisition Programme and guaranteeing
that school meals derive from local agriculture.
After having recognised the multidimensional challenge of hunger, the
National System of Food and Nutrition Security was jointly coordinated
by several ministries, the federal presidency and civil society. The National
Council of Food and Nutrition Security, along with its counterparts at the
state and municipal levels, became the backbone of the entire strategy.
Composed of members from the government and civil society (with two-
thirds of the council’s members from civil society), the council became
the strongest symbol of the integrated and inclusive nature of the Zero
Hunger strategy. Through their majority in the council, civil society actors
were allowed to play an important role in shaping all elements of the Zero
Hunger strategy. In other words, without the active role of local civil
society actors, who had campaigned for a comprehensive national hunger
strategy since Brazil’s redemocratisation in the 1980s, the Zero Hunger
strategy would hardly have come into existence.
The story of Brazil’s Zero Hunger strategy is one of smart dialogue
and exchange among different actors, visions and models. It combined
market-driven economic policies, a strong role of the state and the active
participation and inclusion of civil society to develop comprehensive
and complementary social programmes across several sectors, taking into
account the multidimensional nature of hunger (Elver 2019, 108).
The case of the Zero Hunger strategy is all the more intriguing, as
it unfolded alongside a model that stands in complete opposition to a
democratic, inclusive and local approach to food production and that has
perpetuated the dominant logic of the global food system for hundreds
of years. But at least during the fourteen years of the Workers’ Party in
power in Brazil (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva 2003–2010; Dilma Rousseff
2011–2016), the country was able to set up an alternative approach to the
dominant model of agricultural production; a middle way that success-
fully reined in the negative effects of exclusively market-driven economic
policies, steering them towards the creation of strong social policies to
alleviate hunger and poverty. And still, it cannot be ignored that Brazil
became an agricultural superpower and a dominant actor in the global
food system, perpetuating the predatory logic of food production during
those 14 years of the Workers’ Party in power. Therefore, it must be ques-
tioned whether the Zero Hunger strategy could have coexisted along with
the predatory model of food production in the long run.
Sadly, it will be impossible to answer this question. Now, the world-
leading and inspiring Zero Hunger strategy lies in tatters. When the
far-right and climate change denying candidate Jair Bolsonaro won the
presidential elections in 2019, he dedicated his efforts to brutally disman-
tling the Zero Hunger strategy and giving exclusive priority to the
predatory model of agricultural production (Elver 2019, 108). This
policy shift has led to a massive increase in the deforestation rates
188 M. FRAUNDORFER
in the Amazon—and a return of hunger and food insecurity among

impoverished Brazilians.
5.3.3 Case Study 3: The Committee on World Food Security

In 2009, FAO member states and civil society actors, among them
influential high-profile organisations like La Via Campesina, Oxfam and
ActionAid, came together to reform the Committee on World Food
Security (CFS), which had originally been established in 1975 as an
intergovernmental forum on all matters related to food security. As a
consequence of the committee’s failure to respond to the 2007/08
global food crisis, its decision-making structures were completely over-
hauled (Fraundorfer 2018). The CFS was transformed into a transnational
mechanism that allows non-state actors, particularly NGOs and social
movements, to participate in the committee’s decision-making structures,
shape its agenda, goals and purposes and exercise pressure on states.
In other words, the novelty of integrating civil society actors as full
participants in the committee’s decision-making processes has completely
transformed its meaning.
The CFS’s decision-making process is characterised by the one-
country-one-vote principle (Duncan and Barling 2012, 151). Although
the reformed CFS remains an intergovernmental body, with FAO member
states as the only members entitled to make final decisions, other stake-
holders like NGOs and private actors were recognised as official partic-
ipants of the CFS (Civil Society Mechanism 2012, 28). By comparison,
in the old committee NGOs were only recognised as observers (Duncan
2015, 125). While still being an intergovernmental decision-making body
with FAO member states having the final say, the new committee has
decidedly moved towards a multistakeholder forum. Global social move-
ments have gained considerable influence in weighing in on the commit-
tee’s work. And in global governance today, the new CFS can be regarded
as the most innovative and democratic transnational decision-making
mechanism. Its entire legitimacy and authority rest on the values of demo-
cratic, inclusive and participatory decision-making. And the committee’s
new Civil Society Mechanism represents the key tool for civil society
actors to keep it that way.
The Civil Society Mechanism provides a unique platform in the global
food system to bring together opinions, views and standpoints from all
relevant civil society organisations and affected communities, including
smallholders, indigenous people, farmers, etc. Furthermore, these affected

communities are represented by powerful CSOs from the global north
and smaller organisations from the global south. Thus, it is not too far-
fetched to argue that the Civil Society Mechanism resembles a global
parliament for local communities affected by food insecurity around
the world. Instead of representing their own organisations, civil society
delegates have made it their ambitious goal to facilitate the participa-
tion of representatives of local and vulnerable communities in the CFS’s
consultations and negotiations.
The Civil Society Mechanism is governed by a global Coordination
Committee with 41 members from eleven constituencies and 17 subre-
gions (Civil Society Mechanism 2012, 40). Constituencies include, for
example, agricultural and food workers, artisanal fisherfolk, consumers,
indigenous peoples, landless people, NGOs, the urban poor and so forth.
Civil society organisations represent both the eleven constituencies world-
wide and the 17 subregions. Each of these constituencies is represented
by two members of the respective organisations (the only exception is the
constituency of smallholder farmers which is represented by four members
of La Via Campesina due to their high affectedness in all issues concerning
food security). As a case in point, between 2019 and 2021, indigenous
peoples were represented by the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordi-
nating Committee (IPACC) and the International Indian Treaty Council
(IITC). NGOs were represented by the NGO Friends of the Earth and
the Regional Civil Society Network for Food Security and Nutrition in
the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (Civil Society Mech-
anism 2020). Along with these eleven constituencies, the world regions
are also represented in the form of 17 subregions (one member each) by
different NGOs and associations of local communities and local farmers.
Since its creation, the CFS has debated several contentious issues in
food security governance, particularly owing to the increased participation
and influence of civil society actors. These debates included topics which
FAO member states alone would have been rather unwilling to discuss,
such as the negative impact of food price volatility on food security, the
relation between climate change and food security, the significance of
smallholder agriculture for food security or the impact of biofuels on
food production (Duncan 2015, 110–111). These issues emphasised the
important role of vulnerable communities such as smallholders, discussed
how to ensure a rights-based approach to food security, and thematised
the critical impact of price volatility on food security.
190 M. FRAUNDORFER
The CFS’s principal achievements refer to the open, inclusive and

transparent negotiations of three major documents, the Global Strategic
Framework for Food Security and Nutrition, the Voluntary Guidelines on
the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the
Context of Food Security and the Principles for Responsible Investment in
Agriculture and Food Systems . Although all these documents are non-
enforceable and legally non-binding and thus do not involve any official
sanction mechanisms, they represent a step forwards in transforming the
global agenda on agricultural food production.
Box 5.6: Brazil’s Zero Hunger Strategy and the Committee on World
Food Security
Not least because of the success of the Zero Hunger strategy and its
visionary leadership on food security, Brazil was one of the most ambi-
tious and progressive-minded FAO member states in the reform process
of the CFS. Brazil turned into a crucial ally of civil society organisa-
tions in pushing for an inclusive, participatory and democratic governance
mechanism against fierce and stubborn opposition from other agricultural
superpowers, like the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In this
endeavour, Brazil was guided by the inclusive and participatory features
underpinning its Zero Hunger strategy.
Source Fraundorfer (2018, 90–109)
All these documents were negotiated and agreed on in open and inclu-
sive consultation and negotiation processes involving representatives of
governments, civil society organisations and the private sector (see also
Box 5.6). As a result, the reformed CFS provided a platform for open and
inclusive negotiations on the development of a global strategic framework
for food security and nutrition to better coordinate food security policies
at the national, regional and global levels; the elaboration of voluntary
guidelines to improve the governance of tenure of land, fisheries and
forests; and the adoption of ten principles for the responsible investment
in agriculture and food systems.
All three documents have a much more rights-based focus than it
would have been likely without civil society’s active involvement, empha-
sising the needs and interests of local communities and smallholders
worldwide in food security issues.
The Global Strategic Framework represents the ambitious idea to
establish a policy framework on global food security with an inclusive,
participatory and rights-based approach, including all governance levels

and relying on the participation of all relevant actors in global food secu-
rity governance. By prioritising the importance of implementing national
food policy programmes, the Global Strategic Framework highlights the
state’s particular responsibility in guaranteeing food security. Here, the
participatory, inclusive and rights-based approach embraced by Brazil’s
Zero Hunger strategy served as an inspiring role model for the CFS
on how to approach food security in the context of this global strategic
framework.
The Voluntary Guidelines aim to “improve tenure governance by
providing guidance and information on internationally accepted practices
for systems that deal with the rights to use, manage and control land,
fisheries and forests” (FAO 2012b, 1). They are intended to contribute
“to the global and national efforts towards the eradication of hunger and
poverty” (FAO 2012b, iv) and represent the first global guidelines on the
tenure of land, fisheries and forests negotiated in an intergovernmental
body (McKeon 2013, 110). The guidelines, which will also engage with
the phenomenon of land-grabbing, were enthusiastically celebrated by
representatives of the FAO, NGOs and global movements as a first step in
the right direction to improve smallholders’ tenure rights (FAO 2012a).
In contrast, the Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture
and Food Systems (RAI-Principles) cast a shadow on the CFS’s capacity
to promote human rights. The RAI-Principles failed to become another
ambitious and innovative document. They very much emphasised the
neoliberal approach to agricultural investments based on big industry,
free trade and corporate gains at the expense of adequate protection of
local communities, indigenous peoples and agroecological approaches to
food security. It is even more concerning that this adverse outcome was
possible despite an inclusive and participatory process involving regional
consultations worldwide and the active participation of civil society actors.
The CFS is unique in providing the central transnational setting for
states, civil society actors, social movements and local communities in the
global food system to work on genuinely transnational solutions for the
progressive realisation of the human right to food. At the same time, the
committee’s reach has its limits. Outside the committee’s narrow confines,
it becomes much harder for civil society actors to hold states accountable
to the principles agreed on in the major documents. While the CFS per se
undoubtedly has its merits, it holds no sway over the possible implemen-
tation of the major documents negotiated, such as the Global Strategic
192 M. FRAUNDORFER
Framework, the Voluntary Guidelines or the RAI-Principles. Admittedly,

all these documents belong in the realm of soft law, and no sanction
mechanism exists which could force states to respect and uphold the
principles agreed. A lot depends on states’ behaviour, particularly those
that have been the most progressive-minded in the negotiation processes.
These states need to go ahead by implementing food security policies and
programmes in a participatory and inclusive way, fostering civil society
participation, prioritising vulnerable communities and developing joint
governance models including government representatives and civil society
actors. Here again, the Brazilian Zero Hunger strategy is a case in point.
5.4 Summary
5.4.1 The Resilient Legacy of Colonialism and the Westphalian Logic
The dominant dynamics and processes of the global food system are
profoundly unsustainable, reproducing centuries-old inequalities, hierar-
chical structures and relationships of power and domination that have
driven the global climate crisis and exacerbated the global environmental
challenges of the Anthropocene. The roots of this system can be traced
back to colonial times when powerful colonial companies embarked
on the internationalisation of the food market, trading food prod-
ucts between the colonies and Europe’s colonial powers. The growing
efforts to establish international agricultural cooperation in the early
twentieth century exclusively served the national interests of Europe’s
colonial powers to promote free trade, open new markets and reinforce
agricultural production.
John Boyd Orr, the FAO’s first director-general, failed in his ambi-
tions to regulate the world food trade and transform the FAO into a
global authority with executive powers. Instead, the world food system
has been principally shaped by the national interests of the principal
agricultural exporting states and the private interests of their powerful
companies. The FAO, however, has been relegated to a merely technical
role. A central global authority that would be able to rein in Westphalian
principles is non-existent. Instead, international organisations, such as the
FAO, WTO, World Bank and others, have been used by nation states to
promote national interests, entrenching and globalising the commodifi-
cation of food. As a consequence, local, inclusive and democratic food
production processes were marginalised across the world. Hence, the
dominant dynamics of the global governance architecture that evolved

around the world food trade serve the national interests of the world’s
powerful agricultural exporters and the private interests of the most
powerful food companies at the expense of millions of local farmers,
agricultural workers, peasants and indigenous people.
5.4.2 The False Promise of the Techno-Productivist Logic

Agricultural production lies at the heart of powerful agricultural
exporters’ national (and private) interests. In the early twentieth century,
and particularly after the Second World War, technological innovations
reinforced the productivist logic underpinning agricultural production.
First, through the mechanisation of agriculture in the early twen-
tieth century; then, through the Green Revolution after the Second
World War, which globalised the techno-productivist logic; and since the
1990s through genetic engineering in the form of genetically modified
crops. For the dominant actors in the global food system, the techno-
productivist logic represents the silver bullet for poverty, hunger and food
insecurity. While this logic could increase agricultural production (and the
profits of agricultural exporters) in unprecedented ways, it has had serious
side effects, exacerbating social inequalities and accelerating environ-
mental degradation across the world. This logic, then, is hardly helpful for
solving the global food-related challenges of the Anthropocene. On the
contrary, this logic, if continued, will contribute to severely destabilising
the Earth-system.
5.4.3 The Promise of the Logic of Democracy and Inclusion

Since the 1990s, alternative dynamics and processes have emerged
in global governance, challenging the techno-productivist logic and
promoting socially and environmentally sustainable visions that may help
tackle the Anthropocene’s food-related challenges more effectively. Case
Study 1 presented several movements that have gained influence over
the last thirty years. The FAO has regained a more assertive role in
promoting rights-based approaches, codifying the right to food in inter-
national law. And still, the FAO is only as strong as its member states
want it to be. And there is no desire among the most powerful states
to create a more assertive and independent FAO. Case Study 1 illus-
trated that some of the most promising and inspiring visions for change
194 M. FRAUNDORFER
come from global social movements. The global food sovereignty move-
ment, embodied by La Via Campesina and its almost two hundred partner
organisations from countries around the globe, advocates radical change
and fights for local, inclusive and democratic food production, benefitting
those food producers that are all too often the victims of the techno-
productivist logic: small-scale farmers, agricultural workers, peasants and
indigenous people. After all, these communities produce the majority of
our food. And it is these communities that the dominant structures of
the global food system constantly push into marginalisation, poverty and
food insecurity. By addressing the realities of developing countries, the
food sovereignty movement mobilises local communities from all across
the world and grants them a global voice to express a different vision of
food production.
The food sovereignty movement has been criticised for not connecting
well with urban dwellers from cities in the global north. Here, the food
justice movement represents an urban alternative addressing the food-
related challenges of urban populations. While also emphasising local,
inclusive and democratic food production processes, the food justice
movement is less radical than the food sovereignty movement, making use
of market-driven approaches to change consumer habits, promote local
food production and raise awareness of how food is produced.
Case Study 2 exemplified that states, rather than being part of the
problem, can also be part of the solution. Based on local, inclusive and
democratic approaches to food production and a holistic view of food-
related challenges, Brazil’s Zero Hunger strategy successfully eradicated
extreme hunger and poverty in the country. Like the food justice move-
ment, Brazil’s Zero Hunger strategy relied on market-driven approaches
and closely collaborated with civil society. Given the international recog-
nition of this model, Brazil became a leading actor in the 2009 reform of
the Committee on World Food Security (Case Study 3). The govern-
ment scaled up the lessons learned in its own country to the global
level. Brazil became a strong ally of civil society organisations, like La Via
Campesina, in reforming the committee and pushing for a more promi-
nent role of civil society in the committee’s decision-making structures.
Today, the committee is seen as one of the most democratic and inclusive
global governance mechanisms, allowing civil society a prominent role to
pressure states and promote rights-based debates that can be translated
into transnational governance approaches with a rights-based and envi-

ronmental focus. In many ways, the committee represents one of the very
few examples of transnational democracy in global governance.
These three case studies illustrate that democratic and inclusive
approaches have the potential to suggest new solutions to the global food-
related challenges of the Anthropocene, as they are capable of addressing
the social and ecological root causes of these challenges. These case
studies also show that, rather than being part of the problem, technology-
based solutions and market-driven approaches can be part of the solution
as long as they are firmly wedded to democratic and inclusive decision-
making. At the same time, it must be cautioned that these democratic
approaches are weak and fragile and can never be taken for granted. The
case of Brazil illustrates how easily these democratic approaches (the Zero
Hunger strategy) can be dismantled and undermined by authoritarian and
nationalist governments. In the same vein, the inspiring decision-making
model of the Committee on World Food Security ultimately hinges
on the willingness of reform-minded states to support the committee’s
democratic and inclusive culture.
Questions
• Describe the authority and legitimacy of the FAO! How has the
organisation’s authority changed over time?
• Which strategies has La Via Campesina used to delegitimise the
global food system and dominant food production processes?
• How has the Committee on World Food Security regained its
authority and legitimacy after the 2007/08 global food crisis?
• Discuss the different roles states can play in entrenching the domi-
nant logic of the global food system and promoting alternative food
production methods!
• Discuss the role of technology in global food production processes!
How have technological innovations transformed food production
throughout the last century? And how have agricultural production
methods, resulting from these technological innovations, affected
the Earth-system?
• Discuss the tragic entanglements between the global food system
and the Anthropocene! To what extent can the terms Capitalocene
196 M. FRAUNDORFER
and Technocene explain the emergence of the global food system

and today’s global environmental challenges?
References
Benbrook, C.M. 2012. Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide
Use in the US—The First Sixteen Years. Environmental Sciences Europe 24
(24): 1–13.
Bernstein, H. 2014. Food Sovereignty via the ‘Peasant Way’: A Sceptical View.
Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (6): 1031–1063.
Bombardi, L.M. 2017. Geografia do Uso de Agrotóxicos no Brasil e Conexões com
a União Europeia. São Paulo: FFLCH-USP.
Campbell, B.M., D.J. Beare, E.M. Bennett, J.M. Hall-Spencer, J.S.I. Ingram,
F. Jaramillo, R. Ortiz, N. Ramankutty, J.A. Sayer, and D. Shindell. 2017.
Agriculture Production as a Major Driver of the Earth System Exceeding
Planetary Boundaries. Ecology and Society 22 (4): 1–11.
Cattelan, A.J., and A. Dall’Agnol. 2018. The Rapid Soybean Growth in Brazil.
Oilseeds & fats, Crops and Lipids (OCL) 25 (1): 1–12.
Chadwick, A. 2017. Regulating Excessive Speculation: Commodity Derivatives
and the Global Food Crisis. International & Comparative Law Quarterly 66
(3): 625–655.
Civil Society Mechanism. 2012. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS): A
Guide for Civil Society [Online]. Available from: https://actionaid.org/sites/
default/files/cfs_booklet.pdf. Accessed 4 June 2021.
Civil Society Mechanism. 2020. The CSM [Online]. Available from: http://
www.csm4cfs.org/the-csm/. Accessed 4 Aug 2020.
Clapp, J. 2014. Financialization, Distance and Global Food Politics. Journal of
Peasant Studies 41 (5): 797–814.
Clapp, J. 2016. Food, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Clendenning, J., W. Dressler, and C. Richards. 2016. Food Justice or Food
Sovereignty? Understanding the Rise of Urban Food Movements in the USA.
Agriculture and Human Values 33 (1): 165–177.
Duncan, J. 2015. Global Food Security Governance: Civil Society Engagement in
the Reformed Committee on World Food Security. Abingdon: Routledge.
Duncan, J., and D. Barling. 2012. Renewal Through Participation in Global
Food Security Governance: Implementing the International Food Security and
Nutrition Civil Society Mechanism to the Committee on World Food Security.
International Journal of the Sociology of Agriculture and Food 19 (2): 143–
161.
ECOSOC. 1999. General Comment 12. New York: UN.
Edelman, M., T. Weis, A. Baviskar, S.M. Borras, E. Holt-Giménez, D.

Kandiyoti, and W. Wolford. 2014. Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Food
Sovereignty. Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (6): 911–931.
Elver, H. 2019. Fome Zero: How Brazil’s Success Story Became a Model for
Achieving the Right to Food. In From Fome Zero to Zero Hunger: A Global
Perspective, ed. J. Graziano da Silva, 98–111. Rome: FAO.
FAO. 2005. Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the
Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security. Rome: FAO.
FAO. 2006a. Food Security. Policy Brief 2: 1–4.
FAO. 2006b. Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. Rome:
FAO.
FAO. 2012a. Countries Adopt Global Guidelines on Tenure of Land, Forests,
Fisheries [Online]. Available from: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/
item/142587/icode/. Accessed 4 June 2021.
FAO. 2012b. Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of
Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. Rome:
FAO.
FAO. 2019a. SAVE FOOD: Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduc-
tion. Key facts on food loss and waste you should know! [Online]. Available
from: http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en. Accessed 6
Apr 2020.
FAO. 2019b. The State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture.
Rome: FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
Assessments.
FAO. 2020. Former Director-General José Graziano da Silva: Biography
[Online]. Available from: http://www.fao.org/director-general/former-dg/
da-silva/about-me/en/. Accessed 4 June 2021.
FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2018. The State of Food Security and
Nutrition in the World 2018. Building Climate Resilience for Food Security
and Nutrition. Rome: FAO.
FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2019. The State of Food Security and
Nutrition in the World 2019. Safeguarding Against Economic Slowdowns and
Downturns. Rome: FAO.
Farthing, L., and N. Romer. 2016. Food Justice + Food Sovereignty: Can the
U.S. Food Justice Movement Join the Global Movement? New Politics XVI
(1): 1–15.
Fields, K.H., D.A. Therrien, D. Halstrom, J. Haggard, and P. Clayton. 2018.
International Beef Trade: A Value Proposition. Animal Frontiers 8 (3): 16–
22.
Fraundorfer, M. 2018. Rethinking global Democracy in Brazil. London:
198 M. FRAUNDORFER
Ghosh, J. 2010. The Unnatural Coupling: Food and Global Finance. Journal of
Agrarian Change 10 (1): 72–86.
GRAIN, IATP and Heinrich Böll Foundation. 2017. Big Meat and Dairy’s
Supersized Climate Footprint [Online]. Available from: https://www.iatp.
org/supersized-climate-footprint. Accessed 4 June 2021.
Graziano da Silva, J. 2019. Introduction. In From Fome Zero to Zero Hunger: A
Global Perspective, ed. J. Graziano da Silva. Rome: FAO.
Greger, M. 2017. Industrial Animal Agriculture’s Role in the Emergence and
Spread of Disease. In The Meat Crisis. Developing More Sustainable and
Ethical Production and Consumption, ed. J. D’Silva and J. Webster, 217–227.
Gustavsson, J., C. Cederberg, U. Sonesson, R. Van Otterdijk, and A. Meybeck.
2011. Global Food Losses and Food Waste. Rome: FAO.
Harwood, J. 2009. Peasant Friendly Plant Breeding and the Early Years of the
Green Revolution in Mexico. Agricultural History 83 (3): 384–410.
Heron, T., P. Prado, and C. West. 2018. Global Value Chains and the Gover-
nance of ‘Embedded’ Food Commodities: The Case of Soy. Global Policy 9
(S2): 29–37.
Hoekstra, A.Y. 2017. The Water Footprint of Animal Products. In The Meat
Crisis: Developing More Sustainable and Ethical Production and Consumption,
ed. J. D’Silva and J. Webster, 21–30. Abingdon: Routledge.
ICESCR. 1966. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
[Online]. Available from: https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Professional
Interest/cescr.pdf. Accessed 24 July 2020.
IPBES (The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services). 2019. Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’
Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’ [Online]. Available from: https://
www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment. Accessed 14 June.
Isakson, S.R. 2014. Food and Finance: The Financial Transformation of Agro-
food Supply Chains. Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (5): 749–775.
Khush, G.S. 2012. Genetically Modified Crops: The Fastest Adopted Crop Tech-
nology in the History of Modern Agriculture. Agriculture & Food Security 1
(14): 1–2.
La Via Campesina. 2007. Declaration of Nyéléni [Online]. Available from:
https://nyeleni.org/spip.php?article290. Accessed 11 Feb 2020.
La Via Campesina. n.d. Who Are We. Regions [Online]. Available from: https://
viacampesina.org/en/who-are-we/regions/. Accessed 11 Feb 2020.
Lang, T., and M. Heasman. 2016. Food Wars: The Global Battle for Mouths,
Minds and Markets, 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge.
Lang, T., and J. Ingram. 2013. Food Security Twists and Turns. Why Food
Systems Need Complex Governance. In Addressing Tipping Points for a
Precarious Future, ed. T. O’Riordan and T. Lenton, 81–103. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.
Lipinski, B., C. Hanson, J. Lomax, L. Kitinoja, R. Waite, and T. Searchinger.
2013. Reducing Food Loss and Waste. World Resources Institute Working
Paper, 1–40.
Martínez-Torres, M.E., and P.M. Rosset. 2010. La Vía Campesina: The Birth
and Evolution of a Transnational Social Movement. The Journal of Peasant
Studies 37 (1): 149–175.
McKeon, N. 2013. ‘One Does Not Sell the Land Upon Which the People
Walk’: Land Grabbing, Transnational Rural Social Movements, and Global
Governance. Globalizations: Land Grabbing and Global Governance 10 (1):
105–122.
McKeon, N. 2015. Food Security Governance: Empowering Communities, Regu-
lating Corporations. Abingdon: Routledge.
of the Twentieth-Century World. London and New York: W. W. Norton.
Mighty Earth. 2019. Cargill: The Worst Company in the World. Available from
https://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/Mighty-Earth-Report-
Cargill-The-Worst-Company-in-the-World-July-2019.pdf. Accessed 4 June
2021.
Mignemi, N. 2017. Italian Agricultural Experts as Transnational Mediators:
The Creation of the International Institute of Agriculture, 1905 to 1908.
Agricultural History Review 65 (II): 254–276.
National Geographic. 2019. Why Insect Populations Are Plummeting—And Why
It Matters [Online]. Available from: https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/
environment/2019/02/why-insect-populations-are-plummeting-and-why-it-
matters. Accessed 14 June 2020.
Nunan, C. 2017. Antibiotic Use in Farm Animals: The Global Threat. In
The Meat Crisis: Developing More Sustainable and Ethical Production and
Consumption, ed. J. D’Silva and J. Webster, 228–239. Abingdon: Routledge.
Oliveira, G.L.T. 2016. The Geopolitics of Brazilian Soybeans. The Journal of
Peasant Studies 43 (2): 348–372.
Oliveira, G.L.T., and M. Schneider. 2016. The Politics of Flexing Soybeans:
China, Brazil and Global Agroindustrial Restructuring. The Journal of Peasant
Studies 43 (1): 167–194.
Perren, R. 2006. Taste, Trade and Technology: The Development of the Interna-
tional Meat Industry since 1840. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Perry, E.D., F. Ciliberto, D.A. Hennessy, and G. Moschini. 2016. Genetically
Engineered Crops and Pesticide Use in US Maize and Soybeans. Science
Advances 2 (8): 1–8.
Ribi Forclaz, A. 2019. From Reconstruction to Development: The Early Years
of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Conceptualization
200 M. FRAUNDORFER
of Rural Welfare, 1945–1955. The International History Review 41 (2): 351–

371.
Ritchie, H., and M. Roser. 2017. Meat and Seafood Production & Consumption
[Online]. Available from: https://ourworldindata.org/meat-and-seafood-pro
duction-consumption. Accessed 26 June 2020.
Romer, N. 2014. The Radical Potential of the Food Justice Movement. Radical
Teacher: A Socialist, Feminist, and Anti-Racist Journal on the Theory and
Practice of Teaching 98: 5–14.
Roser, M., and H. Ritchie. 2020a. Fertilizers [Online]. Available from: https://
ourworldindata.org/fertilizers. Accessed 13 Feb 2021.
Roser, M., and H. Ritchie. 2020b. Hunger and Undernourishment [Online].
Available from: https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment.
Rowe, J. 2016. Food Justice Definitions [Online]. Available from: https://tilth.
org/stories/food-justice-definitions/. Accessed 13 Feb 2020.
Schwendler, S.F., and L.A. Thompson. 2017. An Education in Gender and
Agroecology in Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement. Gender and
Education 29 (1): 100–114.
Sharma, S. 2018. Mighty Giants: Leaders of the Global Meat Complex
[Online]. Available from: https://www.iatp.org/blog/leaders-global-meat-
complex. Accessed 28 June 2019.
Sharma, S., and S. Schlesinger. 2017. The Rise of Big Meat: Brazil’s Extrac-
tive Industry [Online]. Available from: https://www.iatp.org/the-rise-of-big-
meat. Accessed 28 June 2019.
Shiva, V. 1991. The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture,
Ecology, and Politics. London: Zed Books.
Smil, V. 2001. Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transfor-
mation of World Food Production. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Solinge, T.B.v., and K. Kuijpers. 2013. “The Amazon Rainforest: A Green
Criminological Perspective”. In N. South and A. Brisman (Eds), Rout-
ledge International Handbook of Green Criminology, 199–213. Abingdon:
Routledge.
Sonnenfeld, D.A. 1992. Mexico’s ‘Green Revolution’, 1940–1980: Towards an
Environmental History. Environmental History Review 16 (4): 29–52.
Specht, J. 2019. Red meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef
Changed America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Staples, A.L.S. 2003. To Win the Peace: The Food and Agriculture Organization,
Sir John Boyd Orr, and the World Food Board Proposals. Peace & Change
28 (4): 495–523.
The Nature Conservancy. 2012. An Overview of the Brazil-China Soybean

Trade and Its Strategic Implications for Conservation [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://www.fcrn.org.uk/sites/default/files/brazil-china-soybean-
trade.pdf. Accessed 21 Apr 2020.
The University of Edinburgh. 2016. Dolly the Sheep: The First Cloned Adult
Animal [Online]. Available from: https://www.ed.ac.uk/research/impact/
medicine-vet-medicine/dolly-sheep. Accessed 2 July 2020.
Tyson, A., Varkkey, H., and Al Banna Choiruzzad, S. 2018. Deconstructing
the Palm Oil Industry Narrative in Indonesia: Evidence from Riau Province.
Contemporary Southeast Asia 40 (3): 422–448.
UN. 2018. 68% of the World Population Projected to Live in Urban Areas
by 2050, Says UN [Online]. Available from: https://www.un.org/develo
pment/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-pro
spects.html. Accessed 13 Feb 2021.
Wasley, A., A. Heal, L. Michaels, D. Phillips, A. Campos, D. Junqueira, C.
Smyth, and R. Winters. 2019a. JBS: The Brazilian Butchers Who Took
over the World [Online]. Available from: https://www.thebureauinvest
igates.com/stories/2019-07-02/jbs-brazilian-butchers-took-over-the-world.
Accessed 11 July 2020.
Wasley, A., A. Heal, D. Phillips, D. Camargos, M. Lainio, A. Campos, and
D. Junqueira. 2019b. Revealed: How the Global Beef Trade Is Destroying
the Amazon [Online]. Available from: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.
com/stories/2019-07-02/global-beef-trade-amazon-deforestation. Accessed
11 July 2020.
Way, W. 2013. A New Idea Each Morning: How Food and Agriculture Came
Together in One International Organisation. Canberra: ANU Press.
WHO. 2018. Obesity and Overweight [Online]. Available from: https://www.
who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight. Accessed 24
June 2020.
Wikimedia Commons. 2020. File: La famille du Duc de Penthièvre dit la
tasse de chocolat.jpg [Online]. Available from: https://commons.wikimedia.
org/wiki/File:La_famille_du_Duc_de_Penthi%C3%A8vre_dit_la_tasse_de_
chocolat.jpg. Accessed 4 June 2021.
Wittman, H. 2009. Reworking the Metabolic Rift: La Vía Campesina, Agrarian
Citizenship, and Food Sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies 36 (4):
805–826.
World Food Summit. 1996. Rome Declaration on World Food Security [Online].
Available from: http://www.fao.org/3/w3613e/w3613e00.htm. Accessed
24 July 2020.
WWF. 2018. 8 Things to Know About Palm Oil [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/8-things-know-about-palm-oil.
CHAPTER 6
Transboundary Water Governance
6.1 Freshwater in the Anthropocene

Freshwater has always shaped the destiny of human societies, giving rise
to settlements and major cities, facilitating trade, cultural exchange and
the expansion of empires. While life on our blue planet is made possible
due to the vast amount of liquid water, no more than 2.5 per cent of
these huge water masses are freshwater, most of which is stored as ice
or in deep underground reservoirs. The planet’s rivers and lakes contain
only a fraction of these freshwater resources, which our entire livelihoods
depend on for agriculture, industry and—the flourishing of all life on this
planet (WWF 2020). Therefore, mighty rivers have been the pulsating
aortas and pumping lifelines of vibrant cities, countries, civilisations—and
human history.
The Nile River was indispensable to Ancient Egypt’s mighty empire,
which provided fertile land for agricultural production and strategic trans-
port routes to other parts of the region and the Mediterranean Sea. Still
today, almost the entire population of Egypt lives in the river’s immediate
vicinity. Looking down at Egypt from the International Space Station
reveals an intriguing view. Very different from the rough, rectangular
shape we might have in mind when thinking of Egypt as a country
on a conventional map of states, from space this country looks like
a flower in full bloom. The sparkling and glittering Nile River Delta,
with a population of approximately 40 million people sprawled across

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88156-6_6
204 M. FRAUNDORFER
several conglomerate cities, resembles the flower head. Still, the brightest
concentration of light can be found at the bottom of the flower head,
representing Cairo’s urban population, one of the biggest cities in Africa,
before the glitter and sparkle turns into a steady stream, meandering like
a tender flower stem through the south of Egypt and beyond. The rest
of what we know of Egypt from a conventional map is pitched into utter
darkness (Image 6.1).
As societies in Egypt have relied on such a mighty river for thousands of
years, so have societies and countries worldwide. Rivers, lakes and coastal
areas have been springboards to economic, political, social and cultural
development. The unprecedented developments of the twentieth century
have changed this reality, symbolised by the skyrocketing growth of the
global population over the last one hundred years (from less than 2 billion
in 1900 to almost 8 billion in 2020) and the accelerating urbanisation of
all world regions (UN-WATER 2019, 21). Egypt epitomises this trend
with a national population that exploded from approximately 20 million
Image 6.1 The Nile River Delta at night (Source NASA Earth Observatory
2010)
6 TRANSBOUNDARY WATER GOVERNANCE 205
people in the 1950s to 100 million people in 2020, and thus has the
demand on water and Egypt’s traditional lifeline, the Nile.
Until the twentieth century, river water was predominantly used for
irrigation, as was the Nile by generations of Egyptians. While until 1900,
90 per cent of global freshwater was used for agriculture, within one
century this figure came down to 64 per cent, and the use of fresh-
water for industry rose from 6 per cent in 1900 to 25 per cent in 2000
(McNeill 2001, 121). Never before have humans used so much water due
to humanity’s exponential growth, the improvement of living conditions
and the expansion of urban areas. The consequences of this increasing
water demand have become ever more serious in the twenty-first century.
Like so many other rivers in the world, which once stood for fertility and
abundance, the Nile has become a symbol of pollution, environmental
degradation, drought and water scarcity, threatening the livelihoods of
millions of small-scale farmers and the country’s food supply.
As along the Nile, so has water demand skyrocketed across the world
during the twentieth century, with no end in sight. More than one
fourth (2 billion people) of the current world population is affected by
the consequences of this demand (UN-WATER 2019, 13). If environ-
mental degradation, water stress and the pollution of the world’s rivers
continue at current rates, by 2050 more than half of the world popula-
tion will be affected, involving serious challenges to food production and
supply, the rise of inequality and poverty, the (re)emergence of water-
related infectious diseases on a regional and global scale (such as cholera)
and an increasing frequency of severe droughts, floods and storms (UN-
WATER 2019, 14–15). All these aggravating factors will tear at the seams
of societies’ social fabric around the world, intensifying the competi-
tion for water as a precious resource and escalating territorial disputes
(UN-WATER 2019, 17).
In the twenty-first century, water can be understood as a prism that
refracts the effects of a range of global environmental challenges and
reflects their multidimensional challenges back to us in the form of
food production, species extinction, infectious diseases, social, political
and economic conflict, unpredictability, uncertainty and crisis. Water
is essentially global. Freshwater resources like lakes, rivers, aquifers,
glaciers, icebergs and ice shelves are interconnected, embedded in a global
water cycle that supports essential ecosystems around the world, such as
(rain)forests, grasslands and wetlands (UN-WATER, n.d.-b). In short, the
world’s freshwater resources are for the world what the Nile is for Egypt:
206 M. FRAUNDORFER
the essential resource that makes life possible in the first place. But as with
other resources, humans have from early on developed tremendous skills
in exploiting water.
Human civilisations have always put water resources to their advantage,
be it through dams, irrigation or watermills. In the twentieth century,
however, this endeavour has reached entirely new heights with human
societies tinkering and messing with rivers, lakes, grasslands and wetlands
all across the globe in ways that have altered the planet’s hydrosphere.
Water pollution through industrial waste, agrotoxics and (micro)plastics
affect the majority of the world’s freshwater resources and, as a conse-
quence, all ecosystems and species on this planet (UN-WATER, n.d.-a).
Dam-building has also significantly changed the planet’s biosphere. Dam-
building itself and the subsequent diversion of river flows for agricultural
production has a long tradition in human societies. One of the pioneers
was, of course, Ancient Egypt, diverting the Nile’s water near Memphis
about 4900 years ago (McNeill 2001, 157). The twentieth century
signalled a new era in large-scale dam-building, with the construction of
massive complexes of rock and concrete for several purposes, one of them
electricity generation.
Most of the world’s 40,000 large dams were constructed after the
Second World War with severe consequences for waterways, lakes,
wetlands, non-human species and human settlements (Conca 2006, 76).
On the one hand, large-scale dams have tapped into an abundant source
for energy and electricity generation; on the other hand, the interventions
into the planet’s water cycle have been severe (Conca 2006, 79). Since the
1930s, all political and economic systems have ferociously pursued large-
scale dam construction as a sign of economic and developmental progress,
national prestige and energy independence (Conca 2006, 83–86). The
Soviet Union built the world’s first major dam in 1932, the Dneprostroi
Dam (Conca 2006, 82) located on the Dnieper River in what is Ukraine
today. In the same decade, the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in
the US was recognised as the world’s largest dam (McNeill 2001, 157).
Today, the Three Gorges Dam in China can claim to be the largest dam
worldwide, taming the Yangtze River’s mighty water flows, the world’s
longest river. Ethiopia currently builds the largest dam project in Africa
on the Blue Nile River, one of the Nile’s two major tributaries, called
the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, in a bid to challenge Egypt’s
millennia-long dominance over the river. Since the twentieth century,

humans have successfully tapped water from all major rivers in the world,
redirecting their water flows and taking advantage of their natural energy.
What has been almost entirely neglected in this global race for ever larger,
higher and more energy-productive dams is the fact that rivers are an
essential part of a global water system, which plays a fundamental role in
the maintenance of the world’s ecosystems and the survival of all species
on this planet. All these local dam projects scattered around the world
have had a cumulative global effect on the global water cycle (resulting in
enormous amounts of freshwater withdrawal for human use), freshwater
biodiversity (high extinction rate of freshwater fish species), highly diverse
ecosystems, such as floodplains and wetlands (lost to dam reservoirs), and
human settlements (displacement of communities) (Conca 2006, 87–88).
This utter neglect of the planet’s ecosystems has resulted in a long
list of ecological disasters associated with dam-building and the diversion
of water flows. One of the greatest ecological disasters of the twen-
tieth century was caused by diverting river streams to benefit agricultural
production. The Aral Sea, located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan
and once one of the world’s largest lakes, has shrunk constantly since
the 1960s and has now almost completely dried up. The government of
the Soviet Union decided to divert the two rivers that fed the lake for
irrigation purposes of growing rice and cotton in the desert. While the
desert flourished, the lake started to dry up, devastating fishery and other
communities whose livelihoods depended on the Aral Sea.
The first satellite picture depicts the Aral Sea on 25 August 2000,
when the lake had shrunk by half compared with the 1960 shoreline. The
second photo was taken on 21 August 2018, demonstrating how much
the lake dried up (Image 6.2).
Another ecological disaster is unfolding in the Amazon Rainforest in
the wake of the construction of the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River,
one of the Amazon River’s tributaries. The first satellite photo shows the
natural flow of the Xingu River in 2000. Seventeen years and two major
dam projects later, the Pimental Dam and the Belo Monte Dam have
considerably dried up the natural river flow, diverting the river south-
ward. Apart from the deforested areas, the river diversion has enormous
ecological and social consequences for one of the world’s most complex
and diverse ecosystems (see also Box 6.1; Image 6.3).
208 M. FRAUNDORFER
Image 6.2 The shrinking Aral Sea in 2000 and 2018 (Source NASA Earth
Observatory, n.d.-a)
Image 6.3 The Xingu River in 2000 and 2017 (Source NASA Earth Observa-
tory, n.d.-b)
Box 6.1: Rivers as Hyperobjects

Mighty rivers bending and twisting for hundreds and thousands of kilome-
tres are almost impossible to capture, understand or comprehend in their
entirety. The Xingu River is almost 2000 kilometres long. This enormous
extension is dwarfed by the Xingu’s main river, the Amazon, which is three
times longer. Pictures taken from space are the only way to depict these
rivers in their entirety.
And yet, even these overview pictures are incomplete because they
entirely lose out of sight the approximately 25,000 indigenous people from
18 different ethnic groups living along the Xingu together with their age-
old cultural traditions which have developed along the river for several
millennia. These cultural indigenous traditions are deeply interwoven with
an ecosystem that stretches even further back in time, emphasising that
all human and non-human species, water flows, plants and trees are
intrinsically interconnected and dependent on one another.
In this sense, rivers as hyperobjects only become visible in times of
ecological crisis. The dam-building projects on the Xingu are merely the
210 M. FRAUNDORFER
latest example of the devastating ecological crisis unfolding in the Amazon

Rainforest. As both the Xingu and the Amazon form an intrinsic part
of the global water cycle, their fate has planetary consequences, affecting
ecosystems and weather patterns across the planet and ultimately reshaping
human history.
Source International Rivers (n.d.).
Almost all mega-dams in Brazil are located in the Amazon River

Basin, the largest and most complex river basin in the world, with the
Amazon as the second-largest river on this planet after the Nile. The
Amazon River Basin houses the largest remaining rainforest, one of
the planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems and richest freshwater basins.
The large-scale anthropogenic manipulation and diversion of these rivers
have put this ecosystem, and many others worldwide, at risk (Latrubesse
et al. 2017). The continuing environmental degradation of the planet’s
complex riverine and coastal systems further pushes the climate towards
several tipping points, aggravating climate change and exacerbating other
closely related challenges, such as water-related infectious diseases, food
security and energy production.
6.2 The Global Freshwater

Governance Architecture
Rivers, lakes, wetlands, grasslands and riverine and coastal areas are funda-
mental elements of the planet’s interconnected ecosystems. The hydro-
sphere, like the biosphere, is threatened by cumulative anthropogenic
interventions at the local level in different parts of the world, such as
dam-building, the artificial diversion of rivers, and pollution. Hence, the
protection of freshwater resources needs to include a global perspective.
Since the mid-twentieth century, water governance has slowly moved into
this direction resulting in a fragmented governance complex of overlap-
ping authorities and mandates through the development of transnational
mechanisms to govern transboundary river basins, the further evolution
of century-old water laws and the improvement of water policy and
management (Gupta 2013, 52–53).
The first transboundary river governance mechanisms emerged in
Europe in the wake of the Congress of Vienna in 1814/15, which for
the very first time discussed the governance of transboundary trading and
shipping routes along European rivers. In 1816, the Central Commission

for Navigation on the Rhine became the world’s first transboundary water
governance mechanism, in place until this very day, to ensure the security
of the Rhine as a trading and navigational route (Rittmüller 1996). The
Rhine Convention from 1831 established the Central Commission of the
Rhine as the very first supranational authority to implement cross-border
policies and rules affecting the Rhine (Gatejel 2017, 782).
Apart from other river commissions popping up across Europe, the
European Commission of the Danube, created in 1856, had a key func-
tion to settle conflicts among rival riverine empires and provide riverine
states a platform for cross-border cooperation on trading and navigational
and engineering issues related to the Danube. Through the commission’s
work, the Danube turned into an international space with its own rules
and policies (Gatejel 2017). Since the Danube is the river with the highest
number of riverine countries worldwide, the commission became a land-
mark development in successful supranational river governance and is
responsible for free navigation and free trade on the river until this very
day under the name of the Danube Commission.
As in other global governance sectors, water governance became
increasingly institutionalised and globalised only in the second half of
the twentieth century. Between the 1960s and early 1990s, first timid
attempts were undertaken to develop global water policy initiatives. The
1990s were marked by the hybridisation of these policy initiatives before,
in the early 2000s, water governance ushered into a period when attempts
were made to create system-wide coherence in a highly fragmented and
polycentric water governance system (Gupta 2013, 53).
The UN Water Conference in 1977 in the Argentine city of Mar
del Plata represented the first international attempt to exclusively focus
on global water problems, a topic that during the first environmental
conference, the UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972
in Stockholm, had only received marginal attention. The principal discus-
sions in Mar del Plata, however, revolved mainly around safe drinking
water and sanitation. An awareness of those topics that have become a
major concern today—such as the excessive use of water in agriculture,
humanity’s growing strain on freshwater resources and the entire global
water cycle, the impact of global environmental degradation on fresh-
water resources and, as an overarching concern, the relevance of water
as a crucial piece of the Earth-system—were only discussed marginally.
But the conference failed even in its most basic goal of translating those
212 M. FRAUNDORFER
first discussions on global water issues into action, such as guaranteeing

universal access to basic water services (Conca 2006, 128–130).
Only in the 1990s, against the backdrop of more fundamental trans-
formations in the international system, and with environmental issues
receiving more attention, water governance became more dynamic. New
actors like NGOs, community organisers, international networks of water
experts and private companies rose to the occasion to frame a global
discourse on water and shape new governance approaches. The Earth
Summit of 1992 in Rio de Janeiro reflected this new-won enthusiasm,
bringing thousands of representatives from international organisations,
governments, NGOs, local and indigenous communities together to
discuss the global dimensions of humanity’s environmental impact and
shape the global political agenda for years and decades to come. And
water was no exception. In the summit’s principal output document, the
Agenda 21, water features prominently in one entire chapter. It empha-
sises a more holistic approach to water governance issues and highlights
the participation of multistakeholder mechanisms along with the funda-
mental role of the state and the dominance of state sovereignty over water
resources (Conca 2006, 143–145).
This renewed sense of activism expressed through a flurry of interna-
tional and global conferences, congresses, symposiums, forums and expert
meetings on water issues gave rise, in 1996, to two hybrid organisations
which would form the new pillars of a global water governance system,
absorbing the new principles of multistakeholderism and holistic gover-
nance: the World Water Council and the Global Water Partnership (Conca
2006, 130–139).
The idea for a World Water Council was first floated during the 1992
Earth Summit before it was launched four years later as a multistakeholder
platform with its headquarters in the French city of Marseille. Its platform
character allows NGOs, academic institutions, governments, companies
and intergovernmental organisations to discuss water issues globally, prin-
cipally through the triennial World Water Forums, the largest water events
in global governance (World Water Council 2020).
The idea for a Global Water Partnership originated in the Dublin
Principles, adopted in 1992 at the International Conference on Water
and Sustainable Development. The Dublin Principles reinforced the shift
towards a holistic governance framework, coined as Integrated Water
Resources Management (IWRM). But more than that, the four Dublin
Principles also interpreted this approach from an economic perspective,

defining water as a commodity and economic good (GDRC, n.d.):
• “Fresh water is a finite and vulnerable resource, essential to sustain

life, development and the environment”.
• “Water development and management should be based on a partic-
ipatory approach, involving users, planners and policy-makers at all
levels”.
• “Women play a central part in the provision, management and
safeguarding of water”.
• “Water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should
be recognized as an economic good”.
The first principle emphasised a shift away from a sectoral towards a

holistic approach, “linking social and economic development with protec-
tion of natural ecosystems” and highlighting that “[e]ffective manage-
ment links land and water uses across the whole of a catchment area or
groundwater aquifer” (GDRC, n.d.). The second principle highlights the
involvement of new actors and challenges the state’s exclusive responsi-
bility for water management. The third principle draws attention to the
importance of gender in water management. And the fourth principle
links the human right to access to clean water and sanitation to the convic-
tion that “[p]ast failure to recognize the economic value of water has led
to wasteful and environmentally damaging uses of the resource” (GDRC,
n.d.).
The Global Water Partnership, based in Stockholm, Sweden, brings
together NGOs, governments, international organisations, research
organisations, educational organisations, regulatory bodies, private sector
organisations and others to promote the Dublin Principles and the
concept of IWRM as the dominant paradigm in global water gover-
nance. In 2000, this paradigm was set in stone through two documents
that paved the way for global water governance’s technical vision of
water challenges: the World Water Vision, presented by the World Water
Council at the second World Water Forum; and the Framework for Action
(Towards Water Security: A Framework for Action), developed by the
Global Water Partnership. Freshwater became dominantly understood as a
214 M. FRAUNDORFER
commodity to be technocratically managed by water experts and profes-

sionals through multistakeholder approaches embedded in multisectoral
and multilevel governance frameworks (Conca 2006, 146–151).
While the timid beginnings of an international and globalised water
governance framework in the 1970s were still dominated by a strong
role of the state and the traditional parameter of territorial sovereignty,
the increasing development of more institutionalised forms of global
water governance coincided with the neoliberal wave of market liber-
alisation since the 1980s, moulding global water governance according
to neoliberal parameters of commoditisation, privatisation and marketisa-
tion (Pahl-Wostl 2019, 9). This trend resulted in the concept of IWRM,
institutionalised by the World Water Council and the Global Water Part-
nership, the two leading organisations in the global water governance
architecture.
Given the lack of an overarching water governance authority to
promote this concept, controversies remain about its meaning and imple-
mentation (Kramer and Pahl-Wostl 2014). The best-established definition
of the concept was developed by the technical advisory committee of the
Global Water Partnership in 2000:
IWRM is a process which promotes the co-ordinated development and

management of water, land and related resources, in order to maxi-
mize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner
without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems. (Global Water
Partnership 2000, 22)
In the wake of the global push towards market-driven and neoliberal poli-
cies, IWRM was arguably interpreted in a neoliberal light, prioritising a
neoliberal mindset and commodifying water and ecosystems. Since the
1990s, a highly institutionalised, albeit fragmented, global policy frame-
work has emerged to globally diffuse this neoliberal interpretation of
IWRM across governance levels and world regions. And it is undeni-
able that a neoliberal interpretation of IWRM’s implementation in many
countries across the world has been widespread (Conca 2006; Harris et al.
2016). Adding to its neoliberal interpretation, IWRM has also dominantly
been conceived as a technocratic approach, with water resources being
“managed” and “optimally utilised” to avoid any “waste” of free-running
water (Cohen 2018; Öjendal and Rudd 2018).
Authority claims in freshwater governance are dispersed across more

than thirty bodies and agencies in the UN system, including UNESCO,
WHO, FAO, UNDP, UNEP and many others. This extreme level of
fragmentation reflects the extraordinary complexity of water and its simul-
taneous importance to questions of food and agriculture, health and
infectious diseases, the environment and climate change, energy, infras-
tructural development, the protection and conservation of ecosystems,
species extinction, pollution and so forth.
The creation of UN-Water in 2003 as an overarching UN body respon-
sible for all issues related to water in the UN system was an attempt to
coordinate across these different institutions and unite water issues in one
UN body. UN-Water has not become a central overarching authority in
global water governance, nor has it contributed to more efficient gover-
nance processes. Its decision-making power is far too weak. Instead, the
value of UN-Water lies in its capacity to gather, collect and dissem-
inate information on the state of water in the world and serve as a
bridge between water experts and policymakers from different UN institu-
tions working on water-related issues (Baumgartner and Pahl-Wostl 2013;
Gupta et al. 2013).
Several rifts have opened up along the dominant paradigm of IWRM
already inherent in the Dublin Principles and the original definition of
IWRM. The Dublin Principles define water as both a human right and
an economic good; definitions which more often than not stand in stark
contrast to one another. These contrasts become particularly pronounced
when the issue of participation comes into play. As in other governance
sectors, water governance has opened up to a range of non-traditional
actors, such as NGOs, research organisations, individual experts and
companies. In turn, these new actors have created their own hierarchies
and power structures. This has led to the emergence of global public
policy networks on water fused with private interests promoting the defi-
nition of water as a commodity and economic good, and not necessarily
of water as a human right (Conca 2006, 153–160).
The following three case studies illustrate in more detail how the
key features of this global water governance architecture (fragmentation,
multistakeholder approaches, commoditisation of water, and technocratic
approaches to water management) play out in the protection of some of
the most important rivers and river basins on the planet. The first case
study zooms in on the Rio de La Plata River Basin in South America,
one of the most biodiverse river basins worldwide. The second case study
216 M. FRAUNDORFER
returns to the Nile River, examining how water conflicts and other conse-
quences of environmental degradation are tackled in the Nile River Basin.
And the third case study introduces an entirely new model of water gover-
nance which radically breaks with the traditional models presented in the
first two case studies. This new model, based on granting legal person-
hood to rivers, rejects the technocratic and neoliberal parameters of the
water governance architecture and embraces an ecological vision instead.
This third case study looks at recent developments in New Zealand, India
and Colombia, where rivers were granted the status of legal persons.
6.3 Protecting Our Planet’s

Rivers and River Basins
The largest part of the planet’s freshwater resources is made up of
263 transboundary lake and river basins that cover almost half of the
planet’s surface. These transboundary basins cut through the terri-
tory of 145 states. There are also about 300 transboundary aquifers
(groundwater basins) cutting through state territories from underneath.
Both transboundary aquifers and lake and river basins affect the lives
of billions of people on this planet in terms of water supply, energy
supply, food production, pollution and other consequences of climate
change like droughts, changes in precipitation patterns and water flows
(UN-WATER, n.d.-a).
This transboundary reality of the planet’s freshwater resources explains
why transboundary river organisations were the first transnational water
governance mechanisms to emerge, dating back to the early nineteenth
century. It would take until the 1990s, however, before transboundary
river organisations were set up across the world to govern transboundary
river and lake basins and become the most established and dominant form
of transboundary water governance. More than half of the 119 river basin
organisations in place, governing 116 shared water basins, have been set
up since the 1990s (Gerlak and Schmeier 2018).
This abundance of transboundary water governance mechanisms might
seem encouraging at first sight. Few of them, however, have been
successful in managing transboundary rivers in the face of the range of
interlinked challenges confronting these institutions, such as urbanisation,
population growth, intensified industrial agriculture and the consequences
of climate change (Öjendal and Rudd 2018). Transboundary river gover-
nance is as fragmented as global freshwater governance owing to complex
and often asymmetrical power relations within the basin, high transaction
costs and increased water dependence (Zawahari 2018). The Rio de La
Plata River Basin poignantly exemplifies this governance dilemma.
6.3.1 Case Study 1: Transboundary Governance in the Rio de La

Plata River Basin and the Guarani Aquifer System
6.3.1.1 The River Basin
The Rio de la Plata River Basin is the second-largest transboundary river
basin in South America (after the Amazon River Basin) and the fifth-
largest worldwide. It covers an area of 3,086,000 km2 and includes all
of Paraguay, 79 per cent of Uruguay, 33 per cent of Argentina, 19 per
cent of Bolivia and 17 per cent of Brazil. Brazil, given its size, covers
with 46 per cent the largest part of the total area of the basin, followed
by Argentina (30 per cent), Paraguay (13 per cent), Bolivia (7 per cent)
and Uruguay (5 per cent). Despite Brazil’s largest share of the basin,
the country does not control the river mouth, which falls into the juris-
diction of Argentina and Uruguay. Apart from three large sub-basins
(corresponding to the Paraná, Paraguay and Uruguay rivers), the river
basin contains several crucial ecosystems (the Pantanal as the world’s
largest wetlands, the Chaco as South America’s second-largest biome,
the plains of the Pampas, the Cerrado as one of the most biodiverse
tropical savannahs worldwide, the Atlantic Rainforest, and the Delta del
Paraná, an extensive network of islands and wetlands. All these ecosys-
tems are suffering from environmental devastation caused by large-scale
industrial agriculture, population growth and urbanisation. The basin is
populated by around 160 million people and counts 57 cities with more
than 100,000 inhabitants. Among these cities feature some of the most
important cities in South America: São Paulo as the largest city in South
America and one of the largest megacities worldwide with 12 million
inhabitants; Buenos Aires as the capital of Argentina; Brasília as the capital
of Brazil; Asunción as the capital of Paraguay; and Montevideo as the
capital of Uruguay (Da Silva and Hussein 2019, 45; FAO 2016).
This brief overview of the basin’s general characteristics illustrates that
a transboundary governance framework of the basin’s abundant fresh-
water resources should play a crucial role in confronting the increasing
water demand and other water stresses caused by exploding population
growth, intensive industrial agriculture, deforestation and environmental
degradation.
218 M. FRAUNDORFER
6.3.1.2 A Fragmented and Conflict-Driven Governance

Architecture
Given the basin’s economic, political, social and environmental impor-
tance to all the five South American countries involved, transboundary
water cooperation has a long history, not least because of conflicts caused
by how to use the rivers’ water for energy and agricultural production.
The river basin’s complex institutional framework slowly emerged in the
1960s, supported by the Organisation of American States (OAS), the
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Economic Commis-
sion for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), culminating in the
La Plata Basin Treaty of 1968. This treaty established the institutional
foundation for formalised intergovernmental cooperation in the basin,
the provision of funding for the setting up of intergovernmental coor-
dination bodies and the signing of several sub-basin agreements (Da Silva
and Hussein 2019, 45–46; Villar et al. 2018, 979, 983).
Over the course of the past five decades, a complex network comprising
19 organisations and consisting of different governance levels, scales and
actors has developed to coordinate the use of the basin’s freshwater
resources among the basin countries. Two of these organisations, which
were established as a result of the La Plata Basin Treaty, the Intergov-
ernmental Coordinating Committee for the La Plata Basin Countries
(CIC) and the Financial Fund for the Development of the La Plata Basin
(FONPLATA), encompass the entire basin and include representatives of
all five basin countries. Five organisations focus on specific sub-basins,
and the other organisations address stretches of contiguous or individual
rivers (Villar et al. 2018, 984–986).
Many of these cooperation agreements are related to the conflicts
caused by the development of large hydropower projects on the main
rivers and their tributaries to satisfy the growing energy demand of the
basin population, more often than not at the expense of social and envi-
ronmental issues. Several of these dam projects are of a bilateral nature,
such as the ITAIPU Dam between Paraguay and Brazil, one of the
largest dams worldwide (Da Silva and Hussein 2019, 47–48). As the prin-
cipal region for hydropower generation in South America, almost half
of Brazil’s energy output is derived from the basin’s mighty rivers, and
around 60 per cent of the basin’s hydropower potential has already been
exploited by the basin countries (Da Silva and Hussein 2019, 48).
The basin is also a hot spot of agricultural production for South
America and the world through the export of commodities like soybean,
corn/maize, wheat and rice (FAO 2016). Hence, massive industrial

agricultural production represents another bone of contention among
cross-border populations and basin countries. For example, the growing
of rice crops uses more water during the dry season than urban popula-
tions, which creates conflicts over the water supply between rice farmers
and urban dwellers. These conflicts gain a transnational dimension in
cross-border regions where farmers on both sides of the border blame
one another for the lack of water for irrigation use (Da Silva and Hussein
2019, 48–50).
Over the last two decades, Brazil, occupying almost half of the river
basin, has risen to an agricultural superpower and a leading exporter of
several commodities produced in the basin, such as soybeans, sugarcane,
coffee, wheat and corn/maize. As a consequence, sugarcane produc-
tion in the region rose by almost 93 per cent between 1998 and 2008
from roughly 3 million hectares (ha) to 5.7 million hectares. In the
same period, soybean production exploded from 6.6 million ha to 10.8
million ha (Vasconcelos et al. 2014, 77). As one of the world’s principal
granaries, agricultural production in the river basin is also crucially driven
by global food demand and the parameters of the global food system (see
Chapter 5).
These developments in intensive industrial agriculture, coupled with
large-scale hydropower generation, uncontrolled urbanisation and popu-
lation growth, act as major stressors on the basin’s ecosystems, altering
the basin’s water cycle and resulting in ever more frequent, extreme and
unprecedented droughts and more intense rainfalls and flooding. These
climatic changes have serious adverse effects on the entire basin, including
its biomes, non-human animal species and human population, exacer-
bating the situation of food insecurity and endemic infectious diseases
like dengue, as well as water and soil pollution (Chen et al. 2010; FAO
2016; Vasconcelos et al. 2014).
Confronted with these dilemmas, transboundary river governance in
the basin represents a paradox. On the one hand, the basin is characterised
by an extraordinarily complex and multilayered web of multilateral gover-
nance mechanisms, with 19 organisations managing different aspects
of the basin’s water resources. On the other hand, given this multi-
tude of organisations and overlapping competencies and mandates, the
highly fragmented and disjointed governance patchwork is increasingly
out of touch with the ever more pressing environmental challenges which
threaten the basin’s biosphere and hydrosphere.
220 M. FRAUNDORFER
Most of the existing governance mechanisms were designed to

minimise conflicts among the basin countries in the joint exploitation of
the basin’s resources, not necessarily to tackle environmental challenges.
But even in their principal task of minimising conflicts, these organisa-
tions have largely underperformed. Through institutional fragility, lack
of transparency and weak authority in enforcing joint action among
basin countries, these governance mechanisms have been largely unable
to achieve a more integrated level of coordination in jointly managing
common water resources (Villar et al. 2018, 991).
6.3.1.3 Governing the Guarani Aquifer

But even in times of severe water stress, when river basins across the world
are affected by ever more extreme droughts, water shortages and water
pollution, the countries of the Rio de La Plata River Basin remain in
an enviable position. Besides its mighty surface rivers and tributaries, the
region is also home to one of the largest underground freshwater reser-
voirs in the world, the so-called Guarani Aquifer. The underground water
confined in this aquifer is more than 100,000 years old, most of which
is used for public water supply. Most of the aquifer is located in Brazil,
which is also the main user of its groundwater with more than 90 per
cent, of which about 80 per cent are used in the State of São Paulo alone
(Sindico et al. 2018, 50).
So far, 592 transboundary aquifers have been identified worldwide,
which may help us find solutions to our increasing water demand (IGRAC
and UNESCO-IHP 2015). Due to the lack of knowledge about their
extension, however, hardly any governance mechanisms on transboundary
aquifers exist (Zawahari 2018). Both in global and regional governance,
norms and cooperation arrangements on groundwater resources are still
underdeveloped. And given the widespread lack of knowledge about their
extension and their relationship with surface water and surface ecosys-
tems, these aquifers have been regarded by states as national rather than
transboundary resources. Adding to that, the lack of knowledge about
aquifers also contributes to their increasing degradation through pollution
and overexploitation (Villar 2016, 6).
The Guarani Aquifer is a case in point. Overlapping with the Rio de
la Plata River Basin, the aquifer extends into Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay
and Paraguay (but not Bolivia) and covers an area of about 24 million
people, with 70 million people directly or indirectly affected by the
aquifer’s boundaries. Only in the 2000s, the four states, together with the
Global Environment Facility, the International Atomic Energy Agency,

the Organisation of American States and the World Bank, developed the
Guarani Aquifer System Project to develop technical knowledge about the
aquifer, foster dialogue and cooperation (Da Silva and Hussein 2019, 46;
OAS 2005, 1–2). Despite the acquired understanding that both the river
basin and the Guarani Aquifer System (GAS) are physically connected,
both systems are governed separately. The dialogue built throughout the
2000s among the four countries resulted in the signing of the Guarani
Aquifer Agreement in 2010, which aims to promote the environmental
protection and conservation of the GAS and use its water resources
through joint cooperation activities (Da Silva and Hussein 2019, 46).
And yet, it took eight years before all four states finally ratified the agree-
ment in 2018, and it remains to be seen how the agreement is going to
be implemented by the four states (Villar 2018).
On the one hand, the Guarani Aquifer Agreement represents one of
only six agreements on transboundary aquifers worldwide, which speaks
for the willingness and commitment of the four South American countries
to jointly govern the aquifer (Burchi 2018; Sindico et al. 2018). At the
same time, the ratified agreement puts the four countries into a global
leadership position on groundwater governance, whose sustainable cross-
border management will be crucial to the adaptation to climate change
and the mitigation of water stresses in the region (Sindico et al. 2018, 57;
Villar 2018).
There is also a fundamental difference between the development of
the governance processes in the river basin and the aquifer. While cross-
border governance in the river basin was driven by conflicts between
the basin states (about river navigation, agricultural production or
hydropower generation), the cooperation process on the Guarani Aquifer
was started to prevent future conflicts and acquire knowledge about the
aquifer’s nature (Sindico et al. 2018, 57). Bearing in mind, however, that
the complex transboundary governance web in the river basin has not
been successful in protecting the basin’s ecosystems and water resources,
the future of the Guarani Aquifer Agreement should be interpreted with
caution. The promises of a legal agreement and its evolution are one story.
The political willingness of governments to implement these promises are
an entirely different story.
222 M. FRAUNDORFER
6.3.1.4 Governing the Exploitation of the Basin’s Resources

Despite a long history of multilateral cooperation among riparian coun-
tries in the river basin, the complex and multilayered governance architec-
ture that emerged over the past five decades has primarily addressed the
exploitation of the basin’s resources for agricultural production, energy
production and general water use. Multilateral institutions emerged
primarily to minimise conflicts among the basin countries over the
exploitation of natural resources. In this regard, the river basin’s gover-
nance architecture reflects the dominant features of the global water
governance architecture: a highly fragmented governance architecture
tasked to technocratically manage water as a commodity and economic
good. Simultaneously, the governance architecture has been too weak and
fragile to effectively prevent interstate conflicts among the basin countries
on resource exploitation (Battistello Espíndola and Ribeiro 2020).
Ironically, by managing the exploitation of the basin’s major rivers
for intensive food and energy production, the transboundary river gover-
nance architecture has exacerbated the multiple environmental stresses on
the river basin, multiplying the risks of environmental degradation and
ecological disasters. The complex set of institutions, treaties and frame-
works in the river basin has not prioritised an ecological and holistic
perspective on the interconnectedness of the basin rivers and the aquifer.
Nor has it adequately taken into account the crucial relationship between
food production, energy production and the health of the basin’s water
cycle. And the existing governance architecture has fundamentally failed
to protect the river basin’s ecosystems from environmental degradation.
6.3.2 Case Study 2: Water Conflicts in the Nile River Basin

6.3.2.1 Power Struggles in the River Basin
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, for thousands of years
civilisations in the Nile River Basin have depended on the Nile as an
indispensable source of their cultural, economic and political flourishing.
Exploding population growth, uncontrolled urbanisation and the surge
in water demand have put enormous stress on the Nile. More than 370
million people live in the basin, which is projected to double in the
next few decades (Abdelhady et al. 2015). The consequences of climate
change, manifesting themselves through alternating periods of extreme
flooding and droughts, create an ever more uncertain future for the
people of the basin’s riparian countries.
In addition to these profound challenges, the power balance among

the basin countries changes with astonishing speed. For millennia, the
Nile’s water was dominated by Egypt, taming and exploiting the river’s
water through sophisticated architecture like irrigation systems, flood
control and dams for hydropower and irrigated agriculture. But the water
flows Egyptian ingenuity has taken advantage of for so long originate
all from outside of Egypt’s borders, which emphasises Egypt’s ultimate
dependency on the Nile’s water flows and the other riparian countries
(Whittington et al. 2014, 595–596).
Given Egypt’s millennia-long dominance in this region, the country
was quick to enshrine its privileged access to the river in international
law. In the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement, the region’s two dominant
powers, Egypt and Sudan, legally divided the entire river flows between
themselves. Egypt acquired the legal rights over 55.5 billion cubic metres
(bcm) of water and Sudan acquired 18.5 bcm. As a consequence of this
agreement, both countries embarked on constructing major dam projects
to benefit their economies. Among these dams features Egypt’s Aswan
High Dam on the Main Nile, which became the biggest dam in Africa.
All other riparian countries were left out of the agreement. And although
the other riparian countries are not less dependent on the Nile, they had
to accept Egypt and Sudan’s control over the Nile (Whittington et al.
2014, 596).
Hence, the Nile has remained under Egypt’s firm control—until
Ethiopia entered the political stage. Given shifting power balances in
the region, involving the decline of Egypt’s influence and the simulta-
neous rise of Ethiopia as a major power among riparian countries, former
certainties about power, influence and control in the Nile River Basin are
being washed away. Ethiopia has always contended Egypt and Sudan’s
claims over the river’s waters. After all, the Blue Nile, which contributes
more than 85 per cent to the Nile’s river flow, originates in Ethiopia
(Elimam et al. 2008, 3). But only recently, Ethiopia has found a way
to challenge Egypt’s hydrohegemony in the region. In 2011, Ethiopia
started construction work on the Grand Renaissance Dam, located on the
Blue Nile, and as such a strategic point of control to influence the river’s
water flows in other countries, most importantly the powerful down-
stream countries Sudan and Egypt (Barnes 2017, 2, 11). Once completed,
this dam will replace Egypt’s Aswan High Dam as the biggest dam in
Africa and turn Ethiopia into a major player in the region’s hydropolitics,
with a crucial say on how the river’s water is used and shared.
224 M. FRAUNDORFER
Since the 1990s, Ethiopia’s government has managed to stabilise a

notoriously war-torn country both politically and economically with a
sizeable military apparatus. Simultaneously, other rivals in the region
(Libya, Eritrea, Egypt and Somalia) have been weakened by domestic
turmoil, international military interventions, regime change and weak
governments. This political vacuum in the region allowed Ethiopia to
unfold its natural potential as a regional and continental power and a
major actor in regional and international diplomacy (Gebreluel 2014,
29–30). With this newly gained political and diplomatic self-confidence,
the Ethiopian government announced in 2011 the construction of the
Grand Renaissance Dam, which, once completed, would seriously chal-
lenge Egypt’s hydrohegemony in the basin. The other countries in the
region, first and foremost Egypt, had no other choice but to accept the
new political realities created by Ethiopia.
6.3.2.2 The Failures in Establishing a Transboundary River

The Nile River Basin is caught in transformation, ranging from social
transformations to political and economic power shifts to the conse-
quences of a changing climate, which affect all riparian countries and
challenge their long-time dependency on the Nile. A transboundary coop-
eration framework could provide the necessary institutional support for all
the eleven basin countries (Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania
and Uganda) to confront these challenges together and develop solutions
that benefit all countries (Paisley and Henshaw 2013, 61).
Transboundary cooperation in the Nile River Basin gained momentum
in the early 1990s. In 1992, several basin countries established
TECCONILE, the Technical Cooperation Committee for the Promotion
of the Development and Environmental Protection of the Nile Basin.
TECCONILE aimed to promote basin-wide cooperation on water use,
infrastructure development and capacity-building. Ethiopia and Kenya,
however, did not join the initiative because of the perception of Egypt’s
dominance and the unresolved issue of equitable water use. And still,
all the basin countries were involved in developing the Nile River Basin
Action Plan, which aimed to foster cooperation through development
projects and establish a basin-wide institutional and legal framework
(Paisley and Henshaw 2013, 65). These efforts finally resulted in the
Nile Basin Initiative in 1999, which became the point of departure for
more intensified negotiations about a permanent legal and institutional

framework for the Nile River Basin (Paisley and Henshaw 2013, 64).
The Nile Basin Initiative, composed of ten basin countries (Burundi,
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda,
South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda), turned into the principal
intergovernmental platform for these countries to develop cooperative
approaches to the Nile’s sustainable water management (Nile Basin Initia-
tive Secretariat, n.d.). Supported by international actors, such as the
World Bank and UNDP, and other countries from Europe and North
America, these efforts towards more integrated cooperation were moti-
vated by the principal ambition to break with the region’s longstanding
legacy of conflict over the use of the river’s water (Cascão and Nicol 2016,
552).
Hence, the 1990s marked a break away from a conflictual past in the
river basin. The basin countries tried to overcome old power hierarchies
and negotiate the creation of intergovernmental mechanisms to facili-
tate transboundary governance and the equitable use of the Nile’s water.
After arduous and long-lasting negotiations, several basin countries finally
carved out a Cooperative Framework Agreement in 2010, which would
institutionalise the collaborative management of the Nile. Six countries
have signed the agreement (Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya
and Burundi), and four countries have ratified it (Ethiopia, Rwanda,
Tanzania and Uganda). The agreement can only enter into force once
six countries have ratified it (Nile Basin Initiative Secretariat 2021). Both
Egypt and Sudan rejected the agreement.
Simultaneously, Ethiopia was the first country to sign and ratify the
agreement. Ethiopia played a major diplomatic role in pushing for the
completion of this agreement and has positioned itself as the upstream
countries’ leader against the two downstream countries Egypt and Sudan
(Cascão and Nicol 2016, 562). With Egypt and Sudan’s objection to
move towards more intensified and substantial cooperation, Ethiopia had
no other choice but to unilaterally announce the construction of its Grand
Renaissance Dam (Cascão and Nicol 2016, 560).
The period of multilateral cooperation that started among basin coun-
tries in the 1990s has broken common ground among the historically
disadvantaged upstream countries in the region’s hydropolitics. They used
the platforms of the TECCONILE and the Nile Basin Initiative to flex
their diplomatic and political muscles and confront the downstream coun-
tries Egypt and Sudan with new political realities (Cascão and Nicol 2016,
226 M. FRAUNDORFER
556). Egypt and Sudan’s rejection of any further multilateral negotia-

tions of transboundary water management, embodied by their objection
to signing the Cooperative Framework Agreement, shows the limitations
of transboundary water governance in the region. This stalemate casts
serious doubts over the basin countries’ capacities to tackle environmental
and climate-related challenges, which, ironically, will make any form of
multilateral cooperation even more urgent. But even during the period
of multilateral rapprochement, the basin countries were largely unable
to find joint responses to the basin’s most serious climate-related chal-
lenges, such as unsustainable practices, water-intensive farming and the
evaporation of water from reservoirs (Paisley and Henshaw 2013, 69).
6.3.3 Case Study 3: Granting Legal Personhood to Rivers

6.3.3.1 A Radically New Argument
Conventional approaches to water governance have failed to protect rivers
as essential parts of the planet’s ecosystems. In the face of these failures,
some environmental groups and movements have searched for radically
new ways of protecting the world’s rivers. For decades, environmental
activists have campaigned for a radically new understanding of nature by
granting nature and non-human animals legal rights in the form of legal
personhood as a last resort to halt the mass extinction of the world’s non-
human animal species and prevent an imminent ecological collapse. In this
context, environmental rights activists have also campaigned for granting
legal rights to rivers.
The argument goes that nature conservation efforts have largely failed
in the face of ongoing and accelerating species extinction and environ-
mental degradation. Nature continues to be exploited excessively because
of the modern world’s dominant view of nature and non-human animals
as legal objects. As a consequence, the global rights of nature and animal
rights movement has campaigned to change our view of nature and turn
non-human animals and other parts of nature into legal subjects with the
status of a legal person. In 2016, the global animal rights movement cele-
brated a historic breakthrough when the chimpanzee Cecília, living in a
zoo in the Argentine city of Mendoza, was granted legal personhood,
transforming her into a legal person with non-human rights, such as the
right to life, the protection of individual liberty and the prohibition of
torture. Cecília became the first great ape in history granted the status of
a non-human legal person (Fraundorfer 2018).
The global rights of nature movement had its epiphany one year later,
when in 2017 three rivers were granted legal personhood: the Whanganui
River, one of the largest and most important rivers in New Zealand; the
Ganges and Yamuna Rivers in India; and the Atrato River in Colombia.
Why did these rivers receive this status? And what does it mean to grant
a river legal personhood?
6.3.3.2 The Whanganui River in New Zealand

The Whanganui was the first river to be granted legal personhood. With
its 290 kms, the Whanganui is one of the largest rivers in New Zealand,
an integral part of the culture of the local Māori (the Whanganui iwi) and
a complex ecosystem (Daugherty and Towns 2019). The government of
New Zealand (the Crown) and the Whanganui iwi had been disputing
the river’s control and ownership since 1873. The legislation developed
in 2017 was the result of an eight-year-long negotiation marathon. The
final legal decision, which was fervently celebrated as a historic moment
by the rights of nature movement, amounted to nothing more than a
compromise between two different positions on how to view nature: the
modern view of nature as an object vis-a-vis an indigenous view of nature
as a subject. The legal process was not primarily driven by the ambition
to grant the river legal rights. And in the context of river governance,
the legal settlement represented a further evolution of participatory and
collaborative river governance in New Zealand (O’Donnell 2019, 161,
164).
While the Whanganui iwi were challenging the government’s owner-
ship of the riverbed, the government sought a compromise to avoid
handing over the river to the Whanganui iwi. Hence, instead of handing
the river over to the local Māori, the ownership of the river was trans-
ferred to the river itself, and the river became a legal person by effectively
owning itself (O’Donnell 2019, 164). A legal person has legal rights (not
to be confounded with human rights): the right to enter and enforce
contracts; the right to ownership of a property; and the right to go to
court (Eckstein et al. 2019, 810). Obviously, a river, even less than a
chimpanzee, is not able to sign contracts, understand the meaning of legal
ownership or sue other parties in court. These tasks can, however, be
undertaken by human guardians who represent the legal person before
the law. As such, the concept of guardianship is crucial to the idea of
granting legal rights and personhood to parts of nature and non-human
228 M. FRAUNDORFER
animals. And here, the cosmologies of indigenous tribes have played a

crucial role.
The idea of legal personhood and the associated concept of guardian-
ship are derived from an indigenous view of humans as being one species
among many and acting as guardians of the planet’s ecosystems and its
abundant species rather than its destroyers. Humans are an integral part
of the planet’s ecosystems where all human and non-human beings are
intrinsically interconnected in complex ways. This indigenous worldview
differs markedly from our modern worldview of humans as detached from
nature and its ecosystems, which only exist to be exploited, commodi-
tised and used as an economic good (Argyrou and Hummels 2019). The
worldview of the local Māori, who have lived along the river for thousands
of years, considerably shaped the legal process which led to the land-
mark agreement in 2017. Rather than assertively fighting for the river’s
legal personhood, the iwi’s major concern was the recognition of the river
“as an interconnected, living whole, protected by an appointed guardian”
(O’Donnell 2019, 164).
The guardianship model of the river consists of two people, one repre-
sentative of the government of New Zealand and one representative of
the Whanganui iwi. This arrangement puts the Māori worldview at the
centre of the Whanganui’s river governance regime. The two guardians
will protect the river’s well-being through a fund of NZ$30 million. A
steering group of 17 stakeholders will guide the management of the river
(11 government representatives from the local and national levels, the
tourism, conservation, recreation and wild game sector as well as the oper-
ator of the Tongariro hydropower scheme; the remaining six are from the
Wanganui iwi) (O’Donnell 2019, 164–165).
It is still too early to evaluate whether this governance scheme
will prove more successful in preserving the Whanganui’s river system
than conventional water governance and conservation arrangements. But
despite its encouraging new vision, the scheme contains a major flaw. Even
though the river owns itself, the river has no ownership over its own
water and aquatic life (O’Donnell 2019, 165; Talbot-Jones and Bennett
2019, 3), which could provide legal loopholes for further anthropogenic
exploitation and misuse. Several other questions remain unanswered.
How successful will the guardians be to enforce and defend the river’s
status as a legal person? Since the government plays an essential part
in this scheme, what happens when a new government with a more
hostile view towards this governance arrangement comes into power?
And despite the considerable role of the Māori worldview in shaping

this governance arrangement (see also Box 6.2), how effectively can
this worldview be implemented when the Māori are required to share
guardianship with the national government, which embraces a modern
understanding of nature? And if the river’s water and aquatic life are not
part of the river’s legal personhood, how effectively can the river system
be protected at all? (Argyrou and Hummels 2019, 754–758; Eckstein
et al. 2019, 807; Talbot-Jones and Bennett 2019, 3).
Box 6.2: The Māori People’s Relationship with the Whanganui River
Our river faces many challenges. Most of the land area has been cleared
of its native forest. And the head waters of the river, which flows from
its source, had been deviated for hydroelectricity generation, which has
destroyed habitat for fish. When you are dealing with a sick river, you feel
sick yourself because the river is you, and you are the river. The laws that
were brought to this country totally ignored the river’s rights to be heard.
So, our vision for the future is that all communities of this river will view
the river in the same way as indigenous peoples do. We are owned by the
river. We do not own the river. The river owns us.
Gerrard Albert, chair of the Whanganui tribal collective, speaking about

the Māori people’s relationship with the Whanganui River.
Source Warne (2019).
6.3.3.3 The Reverberation of the New Zealand Decision in India

and Colombia
Only a few days after the historic decision in New Zealand, the High
Court of the State of Uttarakhand in the northern part of India granted
legal personhood to the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers and, on top of that,
legal rights to all the natural objects in the State of Uttarakhand (O’Don-
nell 2019, 1). Both rivers are of major significance to Indians. Located
in the Ganges–Brahmaputra-Meghna basin, which covers Bangladesh,
China, India, Nepal and Pakistan, water is a highly sensitive issue
involving conflict and national security. As the Whanganui has cultural
and mystical importance to the local Māori tribes, so have the Ganges and
Yamuna for Hindus. Despite this religious and cultural significance, both
rivers are highly polluted and have severely suffered from human interven-
tions, including the consequences of major hydropower dams, agricultural
230 M. FRAUNDORFER
use, and rapidly increasing water demand due to chaotic urbanisation in

the basin (O’Donnell 2019, 167–168).
Inspired by the decision taken in New Zealand, the High Court of
Uttarakhand saw the granting of legal rights to both rivers and all the
natural objects in the state as a last resort to tackle the accelerating envi-
ronmental decline of the river system in the basin. The new legal status,
however, differs significantly from that of the Whanganui. Under the new
ruling, the Yamuna and Ganges are considered legal minors (or children)
with the rights, duties and responsibilities of a living person. This confla-
tion of the status of a legal and living person has created a new form
of legal personhood quite distinct from that granted to the Whanganui
(O’Donnell 2019, 169).
In addition to this legal ambiguity, the court failed to establish how
its ruling was supposed to be implemented in practice (Talbot-Jones and
Bennett 2019, 4). While the court ruling in New Zealand set up a sizeable
fund as the fundamental prerequisite for the build-up and functioning
of new stakeholder governance mechanisms, none of this happened in
India. The court mapped out a new governance mechanism consisting of
guardians and a management board. But how this new arrangement was
supposed to be financed and what the exact mandate of the two bodies
and their relationship to each other was supposed to be, remained unan-
swered. Another major problem referred to the guardians themselves.
According to the court, the leading politicians of the State of Uttarak-
hand, such as its chief secretary and advocate general, were to serve as the
river’s human face. Ironically, these very same politicians were responsible
for the devastated and polluted state of the river basin in the first place
(O’Donnell 2019, 169; Talbot-Jones and Bennett 2019, 4).
These blatant flaws—the ambiguity of the river’s legal status, the
lack of financial resources and the ill-defined roles and mandates of the
governance bodies—make it unlikely that this court ruling will have any
significant impact on the protection and conservation of the river system
(Talbot-Jones and Bennett 2019, 4–5). Instead, the ruling could do
an enormous disservice to the further development of the concept of
legal personhood as a new tool to protect the world’s rivers. Upholding
a river’s legal rights can only be successful if the guardians allocated
can rely on sufficient financial resources, a strong organisational iden-
tity and sufficient independence from the government (Eckstein et al.
2019, 813–814). None of this applies to the river rulings in India. In
effect, those politicians nominated as the rivers’ new guardians expressed
their reluctance to assume this new role and appealed the court’s decision
(O’Donnell 2019, 169–170).
The third court ruling that made international headlines in 2017 took
place in Colombia. The Constitutional Court of Colombia granted legal
personhood to the Atrato whose river system belongs to the most biolog-
ically diverse ecosystems on the planet. The decision had already been
reached at the end of 2016 but was only made public half a year later,
following the court decision in New Zealand (O’Donnell 2019, 170).
The river’s biological diversity is threatened by illegal mining and
logging activities. As in the cases of the Whanganui in New Zealand and
the Ganges and Yamuna in India, the Atrato plays a prominent cultural
and mystical role for those indigenous and Afro-Colombian communi-
ties living along the river. These riparian communities also played a major
role in the court’s decision to declare the river a person with its own
legal rights (O’Donnell 2019, 173). The model of guardianship estab-
lished follows that of the Whanganui. One guardian is appointed by the
Colombian government, and the other guardian by the indigenous and
Afro-Colombian communities. This model was then broadened to include
two representatives each (one male and one female) of the seven main
“ancestral territories” (the territories occupied by indigenous commu-
nities) and Afro-Colombian communities, ultimately resulting in 15
guardians (14 guardians from indigenous and Afro-Colombian commu-
nities and one government representative) (O’Donnell 2019, 173). The
guardians will be supported by a commission of guardians, which includes
the 15 river guardians and an advisory group of experts from NGOs.
An interdisciplinary body with members from ethnic communities, NGOs
and academic institutions will monitor the implementation of the court
ruling (O’Donnell 2019, 174).
The Atrato governance model is similar to that established for the
Whanganui based on a collaborative framework including those commu-
nities for whom the river system has particular cultural and spiritual value.
In the implementation, however, the Colombian case is much closer to
the Indian case, where it is not sufficiently clear how this governance
model will be sustained financially. As in the Indian court ruling, the
Colombian court ruling did not have the power to allocate financial
resources (O’Donnell 2019, 174–175). Hence, the successful implemen-
tation of the court ruling lies in the hands of the government, which
raises doubts about the independent and autonomous character of the
new governance arrangement.
232 M. FRAUNDORFER
It remains to be seen whether the legal decisions taken in New

Zealand, India and Colombia can ultimately point to an ecologically
and economically successful alternative to conventional water governance
arrangements. In principle, all of them point towards a new direction in
water governance. They emphasise the importance rivers and river systems
have in the planet’s ecosystems and directly challenge the neoliberal,
economic and commoditised approach to water. The granting of legal
personhood to a river creates a delicate balancing act between modern and
indigenous worldviews, economic interests of exploitation and indigenous
interests of conservation. Hence, the legal rules, governance arrangements
and mandates emerging out of these legal rulings need to be clearly
defined, financially sustainable and organisationally coherent, ultimately
relying on governmental support. Therefore, the governance arrangement
established to grant legal personhood to the Whanganui in New Zealand
might be the most promising model among the three and, if implemented
successfully, break new ground in water governance. After all, since the
decision taken in New Zealand the global rights of nature movement has
gained traction, with ever more rivers across the world being granted legal
status.
6.4 Summary
6.4.1 A Fragmented, Weak and Ill-Equipped Freshwater
The planet’s freshwater resources are intrinsically interconnected, forming
part of the planet’s hydrosphere and often stretching across state borders.
Freshwater resources across the world are threatened by humanity’s detri-
mental impact in the form of intensive agricultural production, energy
production, population growth and uncontrolled urbanisation. Given the
transboundary and planetary nature of freshwater resources, their contin-
uing environmental degradation and exploitation can only be stopped,
reduced or even reversed with a similarly global and planetary approach,
taking into account the ecological value of these river systems for the
health of the planet’s ecosystems and the survival of human societies.
At the global level, an effective water governance architecture hardly
exists. The 1990s witnessed a push towards intensified institutionalisa-
tion and global coordination, involving multistakeholder approaches and
institutions, such as the World Water Council and the Global Water
Partnership. It is fair to say that the proliferation of initiatives, plat-

forms, conferences, and water governance mechanisms is unprecedented.
And yet, an international water organisation with universal membership,
similar to the WHO or the FAO, is non-existent. The loose patchwork of
organisations, institutions and mechanisms makes it difficult to discern
a central and overarching global authority on freshwater governance.
Instead, this global mandate is dispersed across a multitude of UN agen-
cies, organisations and multistakeholder partnerships. On top of that, the
dominant processes and dynamics of this patchy architecture are guided
by a narrow and ill-equipped view on water, prioritising the economic
exploitation and commodification of water over its intrinsic ecological
value for the Earth-system.
Case studies 1 and 2 poignantly exemplify this conventional approach
at the regional level. The transboundary river governance framework that
emerged in the Rio de La Plata River Basin over the last fifty years reflects
the fragmented nature of global water governance. While river gover-
nance in the basin is highly institutionalised, comprising of a complex and
multilayered governance architecture, its impact on the environmental
protection of the complex river systems has been weak. This is primarily
the case because this governance architecture was never built to address
the ecological root causes of the multiple challenges associated with fresh-
water resources. Instead, the governance mechanisms were primarily set
up to manage the exploitation of the rivers’ water among the riparian
countries.

The predominance of the Westphalian logic in both case studies represents
another reason for the weakness and fragility of the governance models
developed. Case study 1 is particularly intriguing. Although the South
American states of the Rio de La Plata River Basin have managed to build
a complex governance architecture, it is largely ineffective. Transboundary
governance in the basin is characterised by intergovernmental institutions
with weak or non-existent international or transnational authority. Nation
states in the river basin are keen to preserve their national sovereignty
over the basin’s natural resources and exploit the rivers’ water to further
their own national interests of economic growth and development. The
larger transboundary, global and planetary dimensions connecting the
234 M. FRAUNDORFER
river basin to the health of the planet’s hydrosphere and biosphere are
largely ignored.
Case study 2 paints a similar picture. Multiple environmental chal-
lenges threaten the ecological health and stability of the Nile River
Basin. Given severe geopolitical power rivalries among the basin countries,
effective transboundary water governance is essentially overshadowed by
the predominance of a state-centric mindset, incorporating the exploita-
tion of water for economic growth and development into the national
interest. But unlike in South America, the Nile River Basin countries have
never come close to developing the most basic transboundary governance
architecture to guarantee interstate cooperation. Without such a trans-
boundary governance structure in place, it is difficult to imagine how the
basin countries are going to tackle the transboundary challenges threat-
ening the fertility and abundance the Nile once symbolised. Hence, both
case studies exemplify the failure of the conventional water governance
architecture to tackle the transboundary challenges associated with fresh-
water resources. On top of that, their predominantly technocratic and
economic approach to freshwater may even contribute to exacerbating
these challenges and further degrading freshwater resources across the
world. A borderless resource like water can hardly be governed by the
bordered structures of the Westphalian mindset (Cohen 2018).
6.4.3 A Break with Conventional Water Governance

Case study 3 provides a glimmer of hope, indicating that a different
approach to water governance is possible. The granting of legal person-
hood to rivers is inspired by indigenous cosmologies whose views on
water (and nature) are directly opposed to modern worldviews under-
pinning global governance. While in modern worldviews, river water
primarily serves the economic growth and development of human soci-
eties, indigenous worldviews prioritise rivers’ intrinsic ecological value for
the planet’s ecosystems. This ecological worldview puts the principle of
environmental protection above the principle of economic exploitation.
The case of the Whanganui in New Zealand is promising in several
ways. The court ruling was ultimately the result of a compromise agree-
ment between the government of New Zealand and the local Māori,
creating a delicate balancing act between modern and indigenous world-
views, economic interests of exploitation and indigenous interests of
conservation. The governance model with its focus on the concept of
guardianship and its emphasis on democratic, participatory and inclu-

sive decision-making mechanisms, allowing the meaningful participation
of indigenous communities in governing the Whanganui River, points
to a new model of water governance. In contrast to similar court
rulings in India and Colombia, the governance model in New Zealand
is well-thought-out and appropriately financed, inspiring new hope for
the incorporation of ecological perspectives into transboundary water
governance approaches.
Case study 3 also shows that such alternative governance models,
which aim to promote an ecological point of view, can only unfold their
potential impact if indigenous communities and their worldviews are
meaningfully included in the negotiation and decision-making process.
That is, indigenous communities need to be given a voice and ultimately
the power to shape these governance models and their decision-making
process. Otherwise, such alternative governance models can be counter-
productive, undermining the ecological vision they sought to promote
and legitimising conventional water governance.
Questions
• Describe the authority and legitimacy of the World Water Council

and the Global Water Partnership! Which role does the multistake-
holder model play in the authority and legitimacy of these two
organisations?
• Discuss the value of indigenous cosmologies in finding alternative
solutions to water governance! Can aspects of indigenous cosmolo-
gies be replicated in modern societies?
• Can the granting of legal personhood to rivers constitute an alter-
native to conventional river governance mechanisms? Discuss the
potential and limitations of the governance models that aim to
promote legal personhood for rivers!
• Discuss the tragic entanglements between the water governance
architecture and the global degradation of freshwater resources in
the Anthropocene! How has the water governance architecture
aggravated global environmental challenges?
236 M. FRAUNDORFER
References
Abdelhady, D., K. Aggestam, D.-E. Andersson, O. Beckman, R. Berndtsson, K.B.
Palmgren, K. Madani, U. Ozkirimli, K.M. Persson, and P. Pilesjö. 2015. The
Nile and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: Is There a Meeting Point
between Nationalism and Hydrosolidarity? Journal of Contemporary Water
Research & Education 155 (1): 73–82.
Argyrou, A., and H. Hummels. 2019. Legal Personality and Economic Liveli-
hood of the Whanganui River: A Call for Community Entrepreneurship.
Water International 44 (6–7): 752–768.
Barnes, J. 2017. The Future of the Nile: Climate Change, Land Use, Infrastruc-
ture Management, and Treaty Negotiations in a Transboundary River Basin.
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 8 (2): 1–21.
Batistello Espíndola, I., and W.C. Ribeiro, 2020. Transboundary Waters,
Conflicts and International Cooperation—Examples of the La Plata Basin.
Water International 45 (4): 329–346.
Baumgartner, T., and C. Pahl-Wostl. 2013. UN–Water and Its Role in Global
Water Governance. Ecology and Society 18 (3): 1–16.
Burchi, S. 2018. Legal Frameworks for the Governance of International Trans-
boundary Aquifers: Pre- and post-ISARM Experience. Journal of Hydrology:
Regional Studies 20: 15–20.
Cascão, A.E., and A. Nicol. 2016. GERD: New Norms of Cooperation in the
Nile Basin? Water International 41 (4): 550–573.
Chen, J.L., C.R. Wilson, B.D. Tapley, L. Longuevergne, Z.L. Yang, and B.R.
Scanlon. 2010. Recent La Plata Basin Drought Conditions Observed by
Satellite gravimetry. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 115 (D22):
1–12.
Cohen, A. 2018. Why Scale Matters: Borderless Water and Bordered Thinking.
In The Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy, ed. K. Conca and E.
Weinthal, 269–283. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Conca, K. 2006. Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global
Institution Building. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Da Silva, L.P.B., and H. Hussein. 2019. Production of Scale in Regional
Hydropolitics: An Analysis of La Plata River Basin and the Guarani Aquifer
System in South America. Geoforum 99: 42–53.
Daugherty, C.H., and D.R. Towns. 2019. One Ecosystem, One National Park:
A New Vision for Biodiversity Conservation in New Zealand. Journal of the
Royal Society of New Zealand 49 (3): 440–448.
Eckstein, G., A. D’Andrea, V. Marshall, E. O’Donnell, J. Talbot-Jones, D.
Curran, and K. O’Bryan. 2019. Conferring Legal Personality on the World’s
Rivers: A Brief Intellectual Assessment. Water International 44 (6–7):
804–829.
Elimam, L., D. Rheinheimer, C. Connell, and K. Madani. 2008. An Ancient

Struggle: A Game Theory Approach to Resolving the Nile Conflict. World
Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2008. American Society of Civil
Engineers 316: 1–10.
FAO. 2016. AQUASTAT Transboundary River Basin Overview—La Plata.
Rome: FAO.
Fraundorfer, M. 2018. The Rediscovery of Indigenous Thought in the Modern
Gatejel, L. 2017. Imperial Cooperation at the Margins of Europe: The European
Commission of the Danube, 1856–65. European Review of History: Revue
Européenne D’histoire 24 (5): 781–800.
GDRC-Global Development Research Centre. n.d. The Dublin Statement on
Water and Sustainable Development. Available from: https://www.gdrc.org/
uem/water/dublin-statement.html. Accessed 4 June 2021.
Gebreluel, G. 2014. Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam: Ending Africa’s Oldest
Geopolitical Rivalry? The Washington Quarterly 37 (2): 25–37.
Gerlak, A.K., and S. Schmeier. 2018. River Basin Organizations and the Gover-
nance of Transboundary Watercourses. In The Oxford Handbook of Water
Politics and Policy, ed. K. Conca and E. Weinthal, 532–548. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Global Water Partnership. 2000. Integrated Water Resources Management. TAC
Background Papers 4: 1–71.
Gupta, J. 2013. Water Governance. In The Handbook of Global Climate and
Environment Policy, ed. R. Falkner, 51–76. E-Book version. Chichester: Wiley.
Gupta, J., A. Akhmouch, W. Cosgrove, Z. Hurwitz, J. Maestu, and O. Ünver.
2013. Policymakers’ Reflections on Water Governance Issues. Ecology and
Society 18 (1): 1–8.
Harris, L., J. Goldin, and C. Sneddon, eds. 2016. Contemporary Water Gover-
nance in the Global South: Scarcity, Marketization and Participation. London:
Routledge.
IGRAC (International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre) and
UNESCO-IHP (UNESCO International Hydrological Programme). 2015.
Transboundary Aquifers of the World [map]. Edition 2015. Scale 1:
50,000,000. Delft, Netherlands: IGRAC.
International Rivers. n.d. Xingu River [Online]. Available from: https://archive.
internationalrivers.org/campaigns/xingu-river. Accessed 15 June 2021.
Kramer, A., and C. Pahl-Wostl. 2014. The Global Policy Network Behind
Integrated Water Resources Management Is It an Effective Norm Diffusor?
Ecology and Society 19 (4): 1–24.
Latrubesse, E.M., E.Y. Arima, T. Dunne, E. Park, V.R. Baker, F.M. d’Horta, C.
Wight, F. Wittmann, J. Zuanon, P.A. Baker, C.C. Ribas, R.B. Norgaard, N.
238 M. FRAUNDORFER
Filizola, A. Ansar, B. Flyvbjerg, and J.C. Stevaux. 2017. Damming the Rivers
of the Amazon Basin. Nature 546: 363.
of the Twentieth-Century World. New York: W.W. Norton.
NASA Earth Observatory. n.d.-a. World of Change: Shrinking Aral Sea. Available
from: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/AralSea. Accessed
4 June 2021.
NASA Earth Observatory. n.d.-b. Reshaping the Xingu River. Avail-
able from: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/91083/reshaping-the-
xingu-river. Accessed 4 June 2021.
NASA Earth Observatory. 2010. Nile River Delta at Night. Available
from: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/46820/nile-river-delta-at-
night. Accessed 4 June 2021.
Nile Basin Initiative Secretariat. 2021. Cooperative Framework Agreement.
Available from: https://nilebasin.org/nbi/cooperative-framework-agreement.
Nile Basin Initiative Secretariat. n.d. NBI Overview. Available from: https://
www.nilebasin.org/documents-publications/73-nile-basin-initiative-an-ove
rview/file. Accessed 5 Feb 2020.
O’Donnell, E. 2019. Legal Rights for Rivers: Competition, Collaboration and
Water Governance. Abingdon: Routledge.
OAS. 2005. GUARANI AQUIFER SYSTEM: Environmental Protection and
Sustainable Development of the Guarani Aquifer System. Water Project Series
7: 1–4.
Öjendal, J., and G. A. Rudd. 2018. ‘Something Has to Yield’: Climate Change
Transforming Transboundary Water Governance (as We Know It). In The
Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy, ed. K. Conca and E. Weinthal,
507–531. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pahl-Wostl, C. 2019. The Role of Governance Modes and Meta-Governance in
the Transformation Towards Sustainable Water Governance. Environmental
Science and Policy 91: 6–16.
Paisley, R.K., and T.W. Henshaw. 2013. Transboundary Governance of the Nile
River Basin: Past, Present and Future. Environmental Development 7 (1): 59–
71.
Rittmüller, A. 1996. 180 Jahre Zentralkommission für die Rheinschiffahrt.
Auswärtiger Dienst I: 77–83.
Sindico, F., R. Hirata, and A. Manganelli. 2018. The Guarani Aquifer System:
From a Beacon of Hope to a Question Mark in the Governance of
Transboundary Aquifers. Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies 20: 49–59.
Talbot-Jones, J., and J. Bennett. 2019. Toward a Property Rights Theory of
Legal Rights for Rivers. Ecological Economics 164: 1–6.
UN-WATER. 2019. The United Nations World Water Development Report 2019:
Leaving No One Behind. Paris: UNESCO.
UN-WATER. n.d.-a. Transboundary Waters. Available from: https://www.unw
ater.org/water-facts/transboundary-waters/. Accessed 4 June 2021.
UN-WATER. n.d.-b. Water and Ecosystems. Available from: https://www.unw
ater.org/water-facts/ecosystems/. Accessed 4 June 2021.
Vasconcelos, A.C.F., S.L. Schlindwein, M.A. Lana, A.C. Fantini, M. Bonatti, L.R.
D’Agostini, and S.R. Martins. 2014. Land Use Dynamics in Brazilian La Plata
Basin and Anthropogenic Climate Change. Climatic Change 127: 73–81.
Villar, P.C. 2016. International Cooperation on Transboundary Aquifers in
South America and the Guarani Aquifer Case. Revista Brasileira de Política
Internacional 59 (1): 1–20.
Villar, P.C. 2018. Countdown to the Guarani Aquifer Agreement Coming
into Force: Will It Be Effective in Promoting Transboundary Groundwater
Governance? International Water Law Project Blog. Available from: https://
www.internationalwaterlaw.org/blog/2018/06/18/countdown-to-the-gua
rani-aquifer-agreement-coming-into-force-will-it-be-effective-in-promoting-
transboundary-groundwater-governance/. Accessed 4 June 2021.
Villar, P. C., W.C. Ribeiro, and F.M. Sant’Anna. 2018. Transboundary Gover-
nance in the La Plata River Basin: Status and Prospects. Water International
43 (7): 978–995.
Warne, K. 2019. A Voice for Nature. National Geographic. Available
from: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2019/04/maori-river-
in-new-zealand-is-a-legal-person/. Accessed 4 June 2021.
Whittington, D., J. Waterbury, and M. Jeuland. 2014. The Grand Renaissance
Dam and Prospects for Cooperation on the Eastern Nile. Water Policy 16 (4):
595–608.
World Water Council. 2020. History. Available from: https://www.worldwate
rcouncil.org/en/history. Accessed 4 June 2021.
WWF. 2020. Freshwater. Available from: https://wwf.panda.org/our_work/
water/. Accessed 4 June 2021.
Zawahari, N. 2018. Managing Transboundary Rivers to Avert Conflict and Facil-
itate Cooperation. In The Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy, ed.
K. Conca and E. Weinthal, 451–476. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
CHAPTER 7
Global Energy Governance
7.1 Energy in the Anthropocene

7.1.1 Coal—Carbonising, Transforming and Revolutionising
Human Societies
For millennia, wood and animal labour were the primary energy sources
in human societies (Price-Smith 2015, 3). Wood, combined with the
harnessing of wind, was the driving energy force behind the expan-
sion of many empires, including the Roman Empire and the Spanish
and Portuguese Empires. To some extent, the Spanish and Portuguese
were the first nations that embarked on globalising human relations and
leaving a globalised imprint on the further history of humanity in the
form of trading slaves, sugar, cocoa, silver, gold, pepper or cotton across
different continents. As we have seen in previous chapters, the long
shadows of these wood-based colonial relationships have reached deeply
into the twenty-first century, forming a problematic legacy for today’s
global governance architecture.
Wood-based empires had a significant impact on the planet’s ecosys-
tems: the deforestation of vast forest areas in all world regions; the
introduction of invasive species into new habitats (such as rats travelling
on ships); the transmission of viruses in non-European populations (such
as smallpox). Through magnificent wooden flotillas and sailing skills,

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88156-6_7
242 M. FRAUNDORFER
European empires extended their economic, political, military and social

reach across the world, significantly reshaping and altering the history of
innumerable societies in the Americas, Asia and Africa. But still, the envi-
ronmental impact of these first global endeavours on the Earth-system was
limited. Wood posed substantial geographic limitations on the colonial
drive for power, domination, expansion and conquest.
These limitations, however, were lifted with the gradual transition from
wood to coal as the primary energy source. In the seventeenth century,
Britain became the first country to complete its transition to a coal-based
economy. Then, in 1712 Thomas Newcomen’s invention of the steam
engine sparked an energy revolution that would transform human civili-
sation for good. James Watt’s refinement of Newcomen’s invention half
a century later would mark the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in
Britain (Price-Smith 2015, 3–4). The mastery of coal as the new defining
energy source provided Britain with a unique competitive edge to further
consolidate its global empire.
Technological innovations like the Watt steam engine, the locomotive
and the modern factory set Britain and other states in Europe and North
America apart from the rest of the world, putting them on a new course
of dominance and power in the international order (Di Muzio 2015).
Not only would these transformations set Britain on course for forming
the largest empire the world had ever seen. They would also provide the
ground for humanity’s unprecedented globalisation over the following
two centuries. The use of coal, oil and natural gas allowed human societies
to overhaul their energy consumption patterns completely, propelling
human civilisation into an entirely new age and opening up vastly new
opportunities of military and political power, socio-economic organisation
and technological innovation unthinkable before (see also Box 7.1).
Box 7.1: Joseph Conrad and the Emerging Ripples of Globalisation

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Joseph Conrad, a Polish-
born sailor, witnessed first-hand the transition of Britain’s commercial fleet
of sailing ships to coal-powered steamships. On his journeys to the most
remote and exotic corners of the world, he would experience the emerging
ripples of what we now call globalisation, connecting with ever increasing
speed societies and communities from different continents and cultures
through busy trade routes on land and sea. His stories, such as Heart of
Darkness (1899), Lord Jim (1900) or Nostromo (1904), talk about the
7 GLOBAL ENERGY GOVERNANCE 243
emerging conflicts and clashes of this ever more interconnected world,

the dark recesses of human nature – and the dark heritage of the early
beginnings of global governance.
Source Jasanoff (2017).
The energy that fired, drove and spurred on this process was champi-
oned in Europe. Coal was one of the closest and most trustworthy allies
of the mighty British Empire in the nineteenth century (Bonneuil and
Fressoz 2016, 116–120; Di Muzio 2015, 64). The sheer inexhaustible
amounts of British coal reserves close to urban centres in central and
northern England and southern Wales, connected by shipping canals and
railways, provided the backbone of British power, dominance and innova-
tion in the nineteenth century (Mitchell 2011, 15–20). Other large coal
reserves in northern France and Belgium, the Ruhr Valley and Upper
Silesia in central Europe, as well as the Appalachian coal belt in North
America, opened up entirely new pathways for societies and governments
in Europe and North America to dominate the world (Mitchell 2011, 15–
20). In the 1890s, “the aggregate energy content of biomass fuels (wood,
charcoal, crop residues) consumed worldwide was surpassed by the energy
content of fossil fuels, mostly coal burnt by industries, households, and
in transport” (Smil 2006, 30).
An array of technological innovations at the end of the nineteenth
century would boost the thirst for coal. Vaclav Smil regards the 1880s
as the most inventive period in human history, when, among many
other things, those machines were invented that would become the
prime movers of human development in the twentieth century: internal
combustion engines, electric motors and steam turbines (Smil 2006, 64).
7.1.2 Oil—Raising the Game, Pushing Us Further to the Brink

While the use of coal set human societies free from former limitations
imposed by wood, the use of oil in the second half of the twentieth
century raised the stakes and pushed humanity’s natural limits ever further
back. Between 1938 and 1973, world oil consumption skyrocketed from
265 million tonnes to 2765 million tonnes (M’Gonigle and Zacher 1979,
14–15).
In many ways, oil is superior to coal. Given its lighter weight and liquid
form, it is much easier to store, transport and distribute oil across the
244 M. FRAUNDORFER
world. Pumping stations, pipelines and oil tankers reduced the work and
labour force necessary for coalmining, created more flexible and interna-
tional distribution networks and provided a relatively cheap energy source
which accelerated human development with breath-taking speed (Mitchell
2011, 36–39).
The driving force behind these technological endeavours has been the
US, the country whose rise in the international system of the twentieth
century was intrinsically linked to oil, creating “the world’s most energy-
intensive pattern of social reproduction on the planet” (Di Muzio 2015,
82–83). Spearheaded by John D Rockefeller’s creation of Standard Oil in
1870, the US became a formidable oil power by the turn of the twentieth
century (Chernow 1998). After the collapse of Europe in the Second
World War, the US took the reins to reorganise international energy flows
in Europe.
The creation of the new international financial institutions, the Inter-
national Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Recon-
struction and Development (or World Bank) at Bretton Woods in 1944
marked the beginning of a new international system that would be built
on oil rather than coal (Mitchell 2011, 110). By then, the US produced
two-thirds of all the oil available, and US companies dominated the inter-
national production and trade of oil. The international arrangements of
the oil trade built around this new dominance, involving the control
of Middle Eastern oil, established that oil had to be purchased in US
dollars, the currency of the leading oil industry (Di Muzio 2015, 122–
127; Mitchell 2011, 111–123). Linking the commodity of oil to the
US currency subjected the emerging international financial system to the
priorities of US power and US-produced oil.
The Soviet Union, which like the US had developed its oil industry
since the late nineteenth century on the basis of rich oil fields in the
Caucasus and east and west Siberia, became the world’s leading oil
producer in the 1980s (Gustafson 2012; Mitchell 2011, 31–36; Odell
1986). The rise of these two new superpowers after the Second World
War and their frantic race for global domination on the planet and in space
radically accelerated their thirst for oil and the reliance of the international
system on oil.
Box 7.2: Fossil Fuels as Hyperobjects

Fossil fuels like coal and oil are compressed versions of time and space.
For example, “a single litre of petrol used today needed about twenty-five
metric tons of ancient marine life as precursor material, or that organic
matter equivalent to all of the plant and animal life produced over the
entire earth for four hundred years was required to produce the fossil
fuels we burn today in a single year” (Mitchell 2011, 15). The burning of
the planet’s past through the use of coal and oil, compressed over millions
of years in black rock or liquid, entirely reconfigured space and time. The
telephone, the locomotive and railways, the mass production of cars, the
mass commercialisation of air travel, the shipping industry or the nuclear
bomb – all these technological innovations changed our understanding
of time and space beyond recognition. Time and space began to shrink,
reducing the travel time for intercontinental trips from months (or days)
to hours, weaving countries and continents closer together through tele-
graphic wires and international trade. The release of tonnes of compressed
time and space into the atmosphere implicated an ever-tighter compression
of time and space in the international system, generally known as globali-
sation. Fossil fuels like coal and oil are so massively distributed in time and
space that they pervade every single ramification of the institutional and
ideological evolution of the global governance system.
Source Mitchell (2011, 15).
In the following decades, the oil-fuelled US way of life would turn

into a model eagerly emulated by other societies in the West—and across
the world. The mesmerising fascination with fast food, the comfort of a
private car, car-dominated cities and suburban family life with a privately
owned house and garden exercised a gravitational pull on societies across
the world.
The excessive consumption of cheap oil created the conditions for the
Great Acceleration after the Second World War through growing carbon
dioxide emissions and environmental degradation (see also Box 7.2). Only
between 1953 and 1973, the percentage of oil exports increased from
36 per cent to 61 per cent, turning oil tankers into strategic vehicles
to secure the supply of the existential black lifeblood that was pulsating
in the veins of the international system (M’Gonigle and Zacher 1979,
14–15). Between 1970 and 2015, international seaborne trade increased
from 2605 to 10,024 million tonnes loaded, of which the transportation
of crude oil, petroleum products and gas increased from 1440 to 2932
million tonnes loaded (UNCTAD 2018, 5). Oil spills from accidents on
246 M. FRAUNDORFER
oil tankers or oil platforms became a new disturbing reality, polluting

the ocean and degrading the marine system’s biodiversity even further
(Carpenter 2019; M’Gonigle and Zacher 1979; Smith 2011).
Today, our globalised civilisation can only survive because of its overre-
liance on fossil fuels and the uncurbed emission of tonnes of greenhouse
gases. And while a global energy transition towards renewable ener-
gies is underway, the challenges of this transition are enormous and
multifaceted. Given a growing world population and ever-rising energy
demands, the use of fossil fuels is also growing. In 2017, coal was
responsible for the emission of 14,502 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide
(MTCO2 ) (compared with 8296 MTCO2 in 1990), oil was responsible
for the emission of 11,377 MTCO2 (compared with 8505 MTCO2 in
1990) and natural gas for 6743 MTCO2 (compared with 3677 MTCO2
in 1990) (IEA 2020a). In terms of energy consumption, oil, coal and
natural gas remain the dominant energy sources. In contrast, renewable
energy sources like solar and wind power are still largely negligible despite
their fast growth. Oil, coal and natural gas together account for more than
80 per cent of global energy consumption, while solar and wind power
cover a mere 4 per cent of global energy consumption (BP 2019, 11).
These figures demonstrate just how enormous the challenges are in
transitioning to renewable energy sources and loosening our dependence
on fossil fuels. And while climate change is visibly accelerating year after
year, the phasing out of fossil fuels, and thus the reduction of CO2
emissions, is advancing at the speed of a snail.
The abundance of fossil fuel reserves and the discovery of new fossil
fuel reserves extracted with novel technologies complicate this situation
even more. It is unlikely that we will run out of coal, oil or gas anytime
soon. Existing coal reserves might still last for a hundred years, and
existing oil and natural gas reserves for a further fifty years (Ritchie
2017). And the discovery and extraction of new reserves with advanced
technologies can significantly extend this time horizon so that no imme-
diate pressure exists from a potential scarcity of those resources that
sustain our energy systems. One example is the shale gas revolution in
the 2000s in North America, which has substantially increased the global
reserves of natural gas. Advanced technologies of hydraulic fracturing and
horizontal drilling have made the extraction of natural gas from shale
formations (fracking) economically viable. Fracking, however, only exac-
erbates environmental degradation. The drilling process releases methane
and toxic chemicals, contributing to air pollution and the contamination
of drinking water. Therefore, many European countries banned fracking

(Paylor 2017). Over the past two decades, vast amounts of oil and natural
gas reserves were discovered off the coast of Brazil in deep water beneath
the salt layer, so-called pre-salt oil. The estimated oil reserves of 100
billion barrels are so vast that they allow Brazil to become a major oil-
producing country, rivalling the oil reserves of typical petrostates in the
Middle East (Rodrigues and Sauer 2015).
7.1.3 Fossil Fuel Alternatives—No Salvation in Sight

Nuclear energy has been hailed as a powerful alternative to fossil fuels.
The twentieth century embodied both the oil age and the nuclear age.
Propelled by the discoveries of physicists and chemists like Otto Hahn,
Lise Meitner, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein
and many others, nuclear power turned into an essential element of coun-
tries’ energy matrix across the world. And while advocated by many
nuclear energy enthusiasts as a zero-carbon emission and clean energy
source, the environmental consequences of nuclear energy can be disas-
trous (see Box 7.3). The most obvious manifestation of the destructive
nature of nuclear energy is the nuclear bomb. The civilian use of nuclear
energy, however, can be even more destructive, as exemplified by the
nuclear catastrophes of Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011.
Admittedly, an accidental meltdown of nuclear reactors is an extremely
rare event. But once it happens, its environmental and social consequences
are colossal.
Box 7.3: Nuclear Energy as a Hyperobject

Nuclear waste constitutes another hyperobject massively distributed in time
and space. For instance, the half-life of uranium 235 is more than seven
hundred million years. All the nuclear waste dumped into existing nuclear
waste repositories since the mid-twentieth century will continue to be
highly radioactive in thousands of years and possibly long after humanity
has ceased to exist. Although nuclear waste is a global, planetary and multi-
generational challenge, effective transnational cooperation mechanisms are
either underdeveloped or non-existent. Instead, nuclear waste management
and disposal is firmly in national hands.
Sources Brunnengräber and Görg (2017), IAEA (2016), and Poirot-
Delpech and Raineau (2016).
248 M. FRAUNDORFER
Even more than thirty years after the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, the
region around the former nuclear plant remains heavily contaminated.
Both animal and human populations continue to suffer from unusu-
ally high rates of birth defects, genetic deformations, various forms of
cancer, abnormal deformations and chronic illnesses (Mousseau 2014,
93–94, 99; Starr 2014, 66–68). After the Fukushima disaster, radioac-
tive isotopes like cesium-137 contaminated the soil, groundwater and
seafood, entering the food chain and the Pacific Ocean. One month after
the disaster, radioactive isotopes could be detected in the Pacific as far as
2000 km from the power plant and off North America’s shores (Brunnen-
gräber and Görg 2017, 97). About 10 million residents in the region are
exposed to radiation. They will feel the health-related consequences like
abnormal deformations, elevated incidences of various forms of cancer,
genetic mutations and birth defects for generations to come (Koide 2014,
23). It is disturbing to note that key actors in global governance, such
as the WHO and the IAEA, seem to be complicit in covering up the
enormous social and environmental consequences, as well as the global
implications, of these nuclear disasters (Mousseau 2014; Yablokov 2014).
Renewable energies are not a panacea either. When seen through the
lens of CO2 reduction, renewables can be regarded as effective alter-
natives. From a broader environmental perspective, however, renewable
energies are anything but “green” or “clean” and can have devastating
environmental consequences for the planet’s ecosystems. Large-scale
hydropower dams can have a catastrophic impact on riverine ecosys-
tems, river basins and non-human animal species. Today’s large-scale
hydropower projects are threatening some of the planet’s most biodi-
verse ecosystems, such as the Amazon Rainforest (see Chapter 6). Biofuels
derived from sugarcane, corn or wheat are marred by controversy about
the use of food crops for fuel production, which can also involve high
environmental costs, including deforestation, soil erosion and excessive
water use.
There is also a dark side to solar and wind power, the fastest growing
renewable energy sources. The production of solar panels, wind turbines
or batteries for hybrid cars relies on rare-earth elements, a group of 17
chemical elements buried in the earth’s crust. Despite their name, these
elements are anything but rare, and current reserves can last for centuries.
While these elements are as widespread as copper or lead, sites where
the mining of these elements is politically and environmentally accept-
able are extremely rare due to the enormous environmental damage the
mining and processing of these elements usually cause (Klinger 2018, 2).
The environmental impact of rare-earth mining and processing involves
massive resource extraction, nuclear radiation (these elements are often
laced with uranium and thorium), high levels of water and chemical use,
contamination of underground water and soil erosion and biodiversity
loss (Dutta et al. 2016, 186–187; Golev et al. 2014, 58). For instance,
the processing of one tonne of rare-earth elements can generate up to
2000 tonnes of toxic waste and 1000 tonnes of contaminated wastewater
(Dutta et al. 2016, 187). And recycling processes are largely non-existent
(Klinger 2018, 2). Hence, some of the most important rare-earth mines
are located in some of the most remote and deserted places on the
planet, such as Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest, North Korea, Greenland,
Afghanistan, Madagascar or China’s Inner Mongolia (Klinger 2018, 2). It
is no coincidence that most of these mines can be found in places where
environmental regulations and democratic decision-making are scarce or
non-existent (Klinger 2017, 56).
The largest rare-earth element deposit worldwide is located in Bayan
Obo, Inner Mongolia, China, the country which also dominates the
world market of rare-earth materials (Kalantzakos 2017; Klinger 2017).
Rare-earth elements can be mined all over the world, including Europe
and North America. In fact, until the 1990s, mines in Europe and North
America led the world market in rare-earth production before they went
bankrupt in the face of environmental regulations, lower prices from
China and the Chinese government’s decision to prioritise rare-earth
mining (Kalantzakos 2017; Klinger 2017). The air, soil and water in the
region surrounding the pit are highly contaminated with radioactive and
other toxic waste (Li et al. 2016; Maughan 2015) (Image 7.1).
The continuing dominance of fossil fuels represents a major obstacle
to tackling the energy question in the Anthropocene, confronting global
energy governance with vast challenges. The transition to so-called renew-
able energies, such as hydropower, biofuels, solar and wind power,
is deeply fraught and presents acute environmental threats that risk
aggravating the global environmental crisis.
7.2 The Global Energy Governance Architecture

Energy crisscrosses several policy fields and governance sectors. Previous
chapters discussed the importance of energy without explicitly thematising
its relevance to understanding global governance. Global food production
250 M. FRAUNDORFER
Image 7.1 Rare Earth in Bayan Obo (Source NASA Earth Observatory 2012)
processes heavily rely on fossil fuels. Some food crops are solely grown to
be converted into biofuels in the form of ethanol and biodiesel. Hundreds
of large-scale hydropower plants have altered the global water cycle to
transform the freshwater flows of the planet’s mighty rivers into elec-
tricity. And global governance responses to infectious disease outbreaks
and other global environmental challenges require energy in the form of
electricity, transport and heating, largely derived from fossil fuels. Ironi-
cally, the energy we rely on to tackle global environmental challenges is
predominantly derived from fossil fuels.
The energy systems the global governance architecture, our modern
societies and our daily lives rely on are among the principal drivers of
the Anthropocene. Over the past two decades, fundamental efforts were
undertaken to reduce the colossal reliance on fossil fuels and transition
to renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar. Our depen-
dence on fossil fuels, however, is so deeply entrenched in our local,
national, regional, international and global governance structures that
renewables have still a very long way to go to replace fossil fuels. This
one-sided dependence on fossil fuels has left its mark on the global energy
governance architecture.
7.2.1 Visionary Beginnings

As with other issues like food, water and infectious diseases, energy has
also significantly driven formalised international cooperation efforts. The
first formal attempts at cross-border energy cooperation took shape in
1924 with the organisation of the First World Power Conference in
London. Launched by the British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers’
Association, the World Power Conference sought to discuss the future of
energy resources and frame energy for the first time as a global issue to
be approached through a global lens, transcending national perspectives.
During the Second World Power Conference, held in Berlin in 1930,
the first international conference calls took place, with speakers from
London, Berlin, San Francisco and New Jersey (the famous speaker calling
in from New Jersey was Thomas Edison), simultaneously addressing the
conference via cable, wire or telephone (Wright et al. 2013, 13–19).
The successor organisation, the World Energy Council, still exists today
and continues to be one of the most universal energy organisations. One
of the great achievements of the World Power Conferences, the World
Energy Conferences (renamed in 1968) and the World Energy Council
(renamed in 1989) has been the consolidation of a decidedly global
energy outlook, emphasising the essentially global nature of energy and
energy resources. Since its visionary beginnings, the World Power Confer-
ences were accompanied by debates on how to internationalise electricity
and energy sources. The debates of the first two World Power Confer-
ences in 1924 and 1930 centred around the possibility of creating a
network to connect electricity grids in Europe to build up a European
grid; or the installation of solar panels in tropical countries to store solar
energy. Through one of its early publications Power Resources of the World
(1929), the World Power Conferences provided the first comprehen-
sive effort to map the world’s energy resources, particularly coal and oil
(Wright et al. 2013, 8, 10, 19–22). With flagship publications like World
Energy Issues Monitor, World Energy Scenarios and World Energy Perspec-
tives, the World Energy Council remains one of the leading platforms for
raising awareness about the global implications of energy issues.
252 M. FRAUNDORFER
With their idealistic visions of globalising energy cooperation, the first

World Power Conferences were a brainchild of the strong internation-
alist movement in the inter-war period, which enthusiastically dedicated
their efforts to overcoming nationalist sentiments. In the 1930s, however,
nationalism once again gained the upper hand, and only the end of the
carnage of the Second World War opened a new chapter in international
energy cooperation.
7.2.2 The Emergence of the Fossil-Fuelled Global Energy

Architecture
After the Second World War, the large coal reserves in central Europe,
a bone of contention between France and Germany in the two world
wars, gave rise to the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in
1952, the foundation of the European integration project and what was
to evolve into the European Union. The ECSC represented an ambitious
attempt to regulate the industrial production of coal and steel among six
European countries and avoid European competition for the large coal
reserves such as those in the Ruhr Valley (Goormaghtigh 1955).
The first international organisation on energy, the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), was set up in 1957 to assist countries in
developing nuclear energy for civilian use on the basis of international
inspections carried out by the agency. Given the destructive potential of
nuclear bombs, nuclear energy was linked to global peace and security.
In 1960, major oil-producing countries from the Middle East founded
the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to chal-
lenge the monopoly of European and US-based oil companies and exert
more influence over the international oil order. Until then, the so-called
seven sisters, a cartel of seven oil companies from Western Europe and
North America, had dominated natural oil reserves worldwide, control-
ling all aspects of the oil trade, including the oil price. Among them were
companies like BP, Shell and the predecessors of ExxonMobil (Van de
Graaf 2013b, 45–52).
One of the central pillars of today’s global energy architecture was
created during the global oil crisis in the 1970s. Israel’s involvement in
the Yom Kippur War led to an oil embargo imposed by Arab oil-exporting
countries on Israel’s supporters, mostly countries from Western Europe
and North America. These actions triggered the 1973 global oil crisis,
which led to falling oil supply experienced by major oil-consuming coun-

tries from Europe and North America. Given the lack of a coordinated
response framework, these countries, on the initiative of the US, called
into existence the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 1974. The IEA
was established with two crucial functions. First, to maintain a cross-
border system of emergency oil supplies among oil-consuming countries
from the OECD to avoid a repetition of falling oil supplies as experienced
in the global oil crisis. Second, to develop energy policies, information-
sharing and technology transfer among OECD countries (Van de Graaf
2013b, 50–51).
The IEA vividly illustrates that the main pillars of the global energy
governance architecture are stuck in the past; in the 1970s, to be more
precise. By name, the agency comes close to resembling an international
platform for energy issues. In practice, the IEA has been a reclusive club
of thirty member countries from the OECD world. Integrated into the
OECD framework, the IEA’s member countries can only be those coun-
tries that are also members of the OECD, an exclusive club of highly
developed countries. In comparison, the IAEA has 173 member coun-
tries (as of April 2021). And the World Energy Council unites more than
3000 member organisations from around 90 countries in a global energy
network (World Energy Council 2021).
Those non-OECD countries who have made a major impact on the
global energy scene in the last twenty years, particularly Brazil, China
and India, are excluded from IEA membership. However, the agency has
developed associative agreements with these and other countries from
the global south. The IEA’s decision-making structures are frozen in
time. The voting system of the IEA board of governors, the agency’s
main decision-making body bringing together the energy ministers of all
member countries, is linked to the 1973 oil consumption data. This fact
creates the curious situation that those countries that led oil consump-
tion almost half a century ago, including the US, Canada and Western
European countries, continue to enjoy more decision-making power than
other countries. Therefore, any efforts to reform the agency’s voting
system are met with strong opposition from those very countries for
which the IEA was initially designed (Van de Graaf 2013b, 92–93).
The IEA is tainted with oil. Born out of a global oil crisis, the IEA
has been responsible for building up a cross-border oil buffer for its
member states. Today, IEA member states have stocked oil reserves that
can last up to 177 days equivalent to the countries’ net oil imports, far
254 M. FRAUNDORFER
exceeding the originally established 90-day benchmark. In an oil crisis,

member states would delegate to the IEA the authority to distribute oil
reserves among its members. But this emergency mechanism has never
been triggered. On three occasions, the IEA informally distributed and
coordinated oil supplies among its members to mitigate major disrup-
tions in the oil market: in 1991 in the context of the first Gulf War; in
2005 as a reaction to the hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the US; and as a
response to the 2011 intervention in Libya (Van de Graaf 2013b, 90–91).
When the IEA came to life, energy was seen through the oily prism
of fossil fuels and energy security. Mitigating climate change and raising
environmental awareness about energy sources was not among the agen-
cy’s principal responsibilities. The agency has tried to adapt to changing
realities and has become a central epistemic authority on energy, serving
as the principal centre of reference for databases and energy statistics,
including OECD and non-OECD countries. A case in point is the IEA’s
annual World Energy Outlook, providing an analysis of trends and scenarios
in world energy markets (Van de Graaf 2013b, 89–90).
7.2.3 The Institutional Push for Renewables

In the global push for renewable energies in the last two decades,
the IEA’s sole authority on energy has been increasingly challenged by
governments, civil society and researchers. Its heavy focus on fossil fuels,
and its history steeped in oil, did not make the agency a trustworthy voice
for renewable energies. Thus, the creation of the International Renewable
Energy Agency (IRENA) in 2009, spearheaded by civil society organisa-
tions and several European governments, dealt a major blow to the IEA’s
sole international authority on energy issues (Van de Graaf 2013b, 96).
IRENA is the only intergovernmental organisation exclusively responsible
for renewable energies, assisting countries worldwide in their transition
to renewable energies. Established against fierce opposition from the US,
the driving force behind the creation of the IEA in the 1970s, IRENA
has turned into a widely accepted and universal organisation. With more
than 160 member countries, including the US, IRENA is already, after
one decade in existence, a more universal organisation than the IEA with
its 30 member countries has ever been.
IRENA has successfully carved out its turf as the central international
authority on renewable energies. The creation of IRENA was driven
by Germany, Spain and Denmark, countries with significant wind and
solar industries. Germany had led negotiations about setting up an inter-

national organisation for renewable energy since the 1990s. Until the
mid-2000s, however, these efforts did not lead to a substantial break-
through. The international scenario of record-high oil prices between
2004 and 2008 coupled with increasing concern about climate change
favoured a new diplomatic initiative led by Germany which finally resulted
in the creation of IRENA in Abu Dhabi (Urpelainen and Van de Graaf
2015, 164, 173).
IRENA has a decidedly narrow focus, exclusively dedicating its efforts
to promoting renewable energy sources. The organisation does not deal
with environmental issues and is not involved in setting standards or
imposing legally binding obligations. This narrow focus limited to gath-
ering, translating and disseminating knowledge on the technology and
research of renewables and assisting member states in promoting renew-
able energies has helped IRENA establish itself in a short period of time
as a central node on renewables in global energy governance (Urpelainen
and Van de Graaf 2015, 167–168).
IRENA is headquartered in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates,
whereas IRENA’s Innovation and Technology Centre was set up in Bonn,
Germany, reflecting the two countries contributing most to IRENA’s
budget. The United Arab Emirates, a petrostate par excellence, has been
keen to transform itself into a leader in the field of renewable ener-
gies. Germany has historically been a strong advocate of an international
renewable energy organisation. And those actors in Germany who have
driven the country’s energy turn to renewables (Energiewende) were also
behind the creation of IRENA as a form of scaling up Germany’s national
model to the international arena (Overland and Reischl 2018, 336).
IRENA has become a respected global epistemic authority on renew-
ables in a short period of time by generating entirely new datasets,
knowledge and information on renewable energies that are of use to
all governments. A case in point is the organisation’s development of
the Global Atlas for Solar and Wind, an unprecedented global mapping
exercise of the technical and economic potential of wind and solar
energy in member countries (Müller 2017, 313; Urpelainen and Van de
Graaf 2015, 169). Through these activities, IRENA has been able to
shift international attention to renewable energies and stimulate other
organisations, such as the IEA, to do the same (Urpelainen and Van
de Graaf 2015, 171). As a central coordinating authority in the field
of renewable energy sources, IRENA has also turned into an umbrella
256 M. FRAUNDORFER
organisation for many other networked partnerships and initiatives on

renewables that have been mushrooming in global energy governance
since the 2000s: among them feature the Renewable Energy and Effi-
ciency Policy Programmes (2003), the Renewable Energy Policy Network
for the twenty-first century–REN21 (2005), the Global Bioenergy Part-
nership (2006) and the Sustainable Energy for All initiative–SEforALL
(2011) (Esu and Sindico 2016; Urpelainen and Van de Graaf 2015, 170).
7.2.4 A Scattered Architectural Landscape

Although IRENA has contributed to more coherence in the renewable
energy sector, steering the global push towards renewables, the archi-
tectural landscape of global energy governance remains highly scattered,
fragmented and decentralised. Global energy governance fundamentally
lacks a global energy platform or organisation that unites all UN member
states and all relevant energy sources with essential agenda and rule-
setting authority. Instead, global energy governance is fragmented into
different energy sources (exemplified by OPEC, IAEA and IRENA) and
topics like food, climate, development and trade crosscutting with energy
issues (exemplified by the role of the WTO, IMF, FAO, UNDP and
development agencies).
The World Energy Council has provided a global platform on energy
issues throughout its almost 100 years of existence. But as a non-
governmental organisation with competition from a variety of much
more influential international organisations like the IEA, IAEA, OPEC
and IRENA, the World Energy Council lacks the power to shape the
global energy agenda as it had once done before the Second World War,
when the World Power Conferences had constituted the only universal
platform to discuss energy issues. Today, the World Energy Council func-
tions more like a unique universal archive on the history of energy and
energy cooperation (Russ 2019). The UN created a system-wide organi-
sation to promote coherence among UN agencies and bodies on energy
through UN-Energy in 2004. It took the UN until 2015 to incorporate
energy into its development agenda and come up with one Sustainable
Development Goal that exclusively focuses on promoting affordable and
clean energy (SDG 7). SDG 7 explicitly acknowledges the existence of
stark inequalities revolving around access to energy and electricity in the
developing world. In contrast, the 2000 Millennium Development Goals

featured goals on infectious diseases and health, hunger and poverty and
the environment, but not on energy.
Several other attempts were made to create more coherence in global
energy governance. In 1991, the creation of the International Energy
Forum allowed more coherent cooperation on mitigating oil market risks
and brought together member countries from OPEC and the IEA (Harks
2010). Through informal gatherings provided by platforms like the G8
and the G20, governments sought to create more coherence through a
variety of energy initiatives and dialogues. Their efforts, however, were
not crowned by lasting success or substantial breakthroughs (Van de Graaf
2013b, 125–136).
7.3 The Global Push for Renewable Energies

Despite its profoundly fragmented nature, a consensus has emerged
in global energy governance that energy systems need to move away
from fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources. This global push for
renewable energies is most prominently embodied by IRENA and other
transnational networks and initiatives. But most significantly, this global
push encompasses all relevant actors in the global governance architec-
ture, be they states, international organisations, civil society organisations,
philanthropic foundations, companies or cities. The following two case
studies shift attention to two movements which have considerably shaped
the different meanings of this global push. The first case study presents
the global smart city movement and illustrates the role of cities in shaping
the move towards renewables in urban spaces. The second case study
introduces the civil society movement that came to symbolise the renew-
able energy turn in Germany and whose representatives featured among
the architects of IRENA.
7.3.1 Case Study 1: The Global Smart City Movement

As more than half of the world population lives in urban areas, cities have
a crucial role to play in responding to the global energy challenge. Cities
produce up to 70 per cent of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions
and consume up to 80 per cent of the world’s energy (UN-HABITAT
2016, 16). Cities can thus play a transformative role in advancing more
energy-efficient and sustainable ways of living that cover all aspects of
258 M. FRAUNDORFER
urban planning (urban infrastructure, water and food supply, energy-

efficient buildings, transportation, communications and the distribution
of goods).
Over the last two decades, cities across the world have substantially
intensified transnational cooperation efforts at tackling the global chal-
lenge of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions by relying on
transnational alliances. As one of a plethora of responses to the global
energy challenge, cities coined the concept of the smart city. The concept
has proven so attractive that it spurred a global smart city movement in
the last decade, with smart cities popping up in all world regions and
almost all countries worldwide. Smart cities—and these can be entirely
new cities built from scratch or, as is more common, well-established
cities which have turned “smart”—have become global role models and
pioneers in the global push for renewable energy technologies. The smart
city label has become so influential that it has come to define what a
modern and forward-thinking city in the twenty-first century is supposed
to aspire to in contrast to the city of the twentieth century. These
aspirations extend especially to the development of new (participatory)
governance models, infrastructural planning and digital technology (Joss
et al. 2019, 12–15).
Utopian in its aspirations, the smart city discourse is pervaded by
multiple unresolved tensions that are all too well-known from twentieth-
century cities. With its capitalist logic and market-rationale, the private
sector plays a dominant role in shaping the meaning and implementation
of the smart city concept, which is at odds with the emphasis on more
participatory governance models that could benefit the public. The role
of technology and technological solutions to confront the energy chal-
lenge in urban settings also features prominently in smart city designs and
creates an unresolved tension in balancing technology with broader social
questions. Another tension refers to the meaning of smart. Is smart a new
catch-all term for notions like sustainable, environmental and carbon-free,
all fused in a new concept? Or can smart be understood in a much more
restricted sense, principally covering energy-efficient infrastructures, trans-
portation and urban planning, without taking into consideration broader
environmental and social issues like biodiversity, climate justice, food
security, as well as energy and water poverty (Joss et al. 2019, 16–21)?
These points of criticism are as old as the term itself. The technology-
oriented focus of the smart city concept has been criticised since the 1990s
when it was first used in the US by several institutes to find ways of
incorporating information technologies into urban infrastructures (Albino

et al. 2015, 4). Given its technological origins, it is no surprise that high-
tech and IT companies have played a dominant role in framing the smart
city narrative. The IT company IBM even went so far as to have the
trademark “SMARTER CITIES” officially registered in 2011, securing
the company a privileged position in shaping the narrative around smart
cities according to its business interests in cities as promising markets.
Today, IBM is the market leader in smart urban technologies tailoring
the needs of (smart) cities to the company’s interests (Söderström et al.
2014, 311–312).
Smart cities become global test-sites and laboratories for smart tech-
nologies and experiments with renewable energy technologies, embracing
business-focused and techno-centric visions for the future of urban living,
which are then upscaled globally and shared worldwide (Joss et al. 2019,
22–23; Vanolo 2014). In addition to EU-wide funding schemes for smart
cities, the European Commission supports the European partnership on
smart cities and communities to advance a European-wide approach to
the development of smart city components in European cities (Albino
et al. 2015, 15–16; European Commission, n.d.; Söderström et al. 2014,
317). In 2011, business leaders and companies called into life the annual
Smart City Expo World Congress, the biggest worldwide gathering of
private sector leaders and policymakers with a clear emphasis on techno-
logical and business-oriented solutions to shape the meaning of the smart
city. In 2019, fifteen city networks established the G20 Global Smart
Cities Alliance to advance smart city technologies and establish global
policy standards. The World Economic Forum, the leading platform of
business leaders, serves as the Alliance’s secretariat (World Economic
Forum 2019).
7.3.1.1 Masdar City: Smart in the Desert

IRENA, which represented one of the most successful institutional inno-
vations in global energy governance in the last decade, is headquartered
in Abu Dhabi. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has one of the most
abundant oil and gas reserves worldwide and belongs to the leading oil-
producing and exporting states (Masdar Institute and IRENA 2015, 8).
Abu Dhabi is the emirate where 90 per cent of the UAE’s oil reserves
are located and which the emir of Abu Dhabi used to radically trans-
form the emirate into a leading model of urban transformation (Crot
260 M. FRAUNDORFER
2013, 2811). Unlike other petrostates, the UAE has heavily invested in
renewable energies, particularly solar and wind power.
To boost its image as a leader in the global push to renewables, the
UAE smartly outmanoeuvred Germany in the negotiations for hosting
IRENA. Initially, Germany, the long-time supporter behind the creation
of IRENA, had hoped to open IRENA’s new headquarters in Bonn,
where the UNFCCC secretariat is based. Through an elaborate lobbying
campaign and massive financial promises Germany could not compete
with, Abu Dhabi won the bid to host IRENA instead. For instance,
among several financial promises, the UAE committed to paying US$136
million over the first six years of IRENA’s existence compared with
Germany’s promised US$11 million (Van de Graaf 2013a, 24). As a
consolation prize, Germany was offered to house IRENA’s Innovation
and Technology Centre in Bonn.
IRENA’s permanent headquarters was officially opened in 2015 as a
purpose-built and energy-smart building which demands considerably less
energy than conventional buildings due to smart technology and photo-
voltaic systems (IRENA 2015). IRENA’s new headquarters is located in
an area of Abu Dhabi called Masdar City, a state-of-the-art development
site that its founders ambitiously called “the world’s most sustainable eco-
city” (Cugurullo 2016, 2426). An entirely new city stamped out of the
ground in 2006 to incorporate the latest renewable and energy efficient
technologies, Masdar City soon became a global model for sustainability
and urban planning in the twenty-first century (Cugurullo 2013, 25).
Aiming high, Masdar City was conceived as the first zero-waste and zero-
carbon city in history. The global recession of 2008, however, turned
these lofty ideas upside down, forcing the emirate to cut down on its
ambitions. Instead of carbon-zero, the new goal was to turn Masdar City
into a global model for a carbon–neutral city (Cugurullo 2013, 28).
In their marketing discourses, smart cities usually stress ecological
and environmental concerns. Masdar City is no exception. But a closer
look behind the sparkling surface of glass and chrome façades, gleaming
rooftop solar panels and the feel-good discourse of green energy reveals
rather conventional processes at play. As a highly profitable enterprise,
multinational companies from across the world are attracted to the glis-
tening sun of Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City like moths are to a streetlamp
at night. Companies are invited to rent portions of the city, install their
own laboratories and test their technological innovations in real-time.
Successful products are then integrated into the city’s urban fabric. As the
city project serves as a business venture for both multinational compa-

nies and Abu Dhabi, the entire city infrastructure is exclusively shaped
by companies’ needs and dictates. In other words, those companies that
are invited to develop and test their technology in the city simultane-
ously become the city’s architects and urban planners (Cugurullo 2016,
2426–2427).
Federico Cugurullo argues that “the eco-city is a project where ‘eco’
does not stand for ‘ecological’ but for ‘economic’” (2016, 2428). Masdar
City throws several contradictions of the renewable energy revolution into
sharp relief. In 2019, a mere 10 per cent of the city was completed,
and few residents lived in the city (Griffiths and Sovacool 2020, 6).
And as long as Masdar City is not completed, this profit-making busi-
ness venture will rely on Abu Dhabi’s abundant oil and gas revenues. In a
water-scarce environment like Abu Dhabi, Masdar City’s water is provided
through a desalination plant powered by gas (Crot 2013, 2817). At the
same time, the commercialisation and worldwide sale of newly developed
renewable energy products in Masdar City (roof-mounted solar panels,
energy-efficient façades, ventilators, meters, sensors, generators, optical
fibre cables) generate new revenues for Abu Dhabi and participating
companies (Cugurullo 2013, 30; Cugurullo 2016, 2427–2429).
The aspect of economic sustainability enjoys overriding priority at
the expense of environmental concerns. The smart city concept of
Masdar City eyes technological innovations and fixes as a viable solu-
tion to the energy challenge, largely neglecting its broader social and
environmental dimensions. Environmental sustainability is merely under-
stood through the lens of CO2 emissions reductions, leaving aside other
environmental aspects, such as ecosystems protection. The processes char-
acterising Masdar City are embedded in capitalist logics, highly reliant
on the commercialisation and consumption of commodities, as well as
resource extraction on a massive scale, and dominated by multinational
corporations and global value chains (Crot 2013, 2821; Cugurullo 2013,
30–31; 2016, 2429–2430). The technologies developed in Masdar City
are particularly relevant for solar and wind power. But as discussed earlier,
solar and wind power technologies rely on rare-earth elements whose
production involves massive environmental risks.
Still, it can be argued that the construction of Masdar City has trig-
gered broader transformations in Abu Dhabi and the wider region,
stimulating some reforms in energy systems, promoting renewable ener-
gies, developing sustainable buildings and embracing innovative ideas
262 M. FRAUNDORFER
about sustainable urban planning (Griffiths and Sovacool 2020, 8). But
it is also true that Masdar City stands for an emerging renewable energy
industry, which in many ways reproduces a capitalist and environmentally
hostile logic similar to that embraced by the fossil fuel industry.
The International Renewable Energy Agency also has a role to play
in this narrative. In many ways, the agency embodies the global smart
city movement. Based in one of the most emblematic smart cities in
the world, IRENA’s headquarters fulfils all the typical requirements of
smart city technology. With passive design and smart energy management
systems, solar water heaters and a 1000 m2 photovoltaic rooftop system
(IRENA 2015), the IRENA building incorporates lots of those smart
technology devices that have become the fundamental building blocks of
the smart city concept. In the same vein, IRENA’s mandate is exclusively
focused on gathering, translating, sharing and disseminating information
among its member states on renewable energy technologies and innova-
tion, which constitute the hardware of the smart city narrative. On the
broader environmental and social implications of climate change and the
energy challenge, however, IRENA has nothing to say.
7.3.1.2 The Indian Smart Cities Mission: A Nation-Wide

Development Initiative
In 2015, the Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi
launched the Smart Cities Mission, a nation-wide smart city project
to boost urban development, drive economic growth, improve people’s
quality of life in urban areas and modernise India’s cities. In line with
global trends of urbanisation, Indian cities struggle with all the prob-
lems typical of cities in developing countries across the world: surging
and uncontrolled urbanisation, perennial traffic gridlock, extreme levels
of inequality and poverty, chaotic urban planning, overburdened urban
infrastructure, deficient public transport, rampant water, sanitation and
hygiene problems, massive environmental degradation and greenhouse
gas emissions. India’s cities notoriously belong to the least developed and
most polluted cities worldwide (Aijaz and Hoelscher 2015, 1–2; McDuie-
Ra and Lai 2019, 358; Praharaj et al. 2018, 36; Smith et al. 2019, 519).
In 2020, nine of the ten most polluted cities worldwide were located in
India, with India’s capital Delhi winning the title of the worst polluted of
all capital cities worldwide (IQAir 2021).
Against the backdrop of these massive urban development challenges,
the Modi government presented the Smart Cities Mission as the key to
unlocking India’s development potential and preparing India’s cities for

the challenges of the twenty-first century (Praharaj et al. 2018, 36). In a
nation-wide competition, 100 Indian cities were awarded the status of a
smart city, which made them eligible for government funding amounting
to up to US$80 million in the first four years of the scheme alone
(McDuie-Ra and Lai 2019, 362). Since the smart city status has also
been awarded to many smaller cities in marginalised border regions often
neglected by government funding, cities have regarded this initiative as an
opportunity to gain international exposure and participate in the global
smart city movement, attracting attention and investment from interna-
tional companies and businesses (McDuie-Ra and Lai 2019, 362; Praharaj
and Han 2019, 2).
It is, however, questionable whether the Smart Cities Mission can
deliver on the ambitious promises made by the Indian government and
serve as a new paradigm for promoting economic growth and develop-
ment. In many ways, the Smart Cities Mission replicates the characteristics
of the global smart city movement and reflects the government’s convic-
tion that India’s social and environmental challenges can be effectively
tackled with an exclusive focus on technology-based solutions (Basu
2019, 81). Environmental concerns have not been among the program-
me’s top priorities. While mentioning the term air pollution only once
and the term environment four times, the government’s selection process
of the 100 cities deemed to be smart made no mention at all of terms
like biodiversity or climate change (Rajneesh et al. 2018, 3).
Instead, the keywords that repeatedly flashed up in the Indian smart
city discourse from early on revolved around big business, IT technology
and neoliberal market strategies (Praharaj and Han 2019, 2). Immediately
after the launch of the Smart Cities Mission, several leading multina-
tional IT companies and consulting firms integral to the global smart city
movement, such as Cisco, IBM, Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers,
published their own visions of the Indian smart city: a city that heavily
relies on IT technology (smart grids, sensors, algorithms, data analytics,
video surveillance, command and control centres and cloud-based tech-
nology) to solve India’s manifold and complex urban problems, increase
energy efficiency and improve living standards (Praharaj and Han 2019,
3–4). Backed by the Indian government and its technocratic discourse,
multinational corporations discovered Indian cities as a new playing field
to extend the reach of the global smart city movement and put smart tech-
nologies and business solutions at the heart of urban planning in India
264 M. FRAUNDORFER
(Basu 2019, 80; Praharaj and Han 2019, 4). Through consulting and
project development contracts, companies have become dominant players
in implementing India’s Smart Cities Mission in line with their techno-
cratic and business-oriented vision and at the expense of the influence of
municipal governments, local urban bodies, local communities and local
voices (Basu 2019, 78; McDuie-Ra and Lai 2019, 366; Praharaj and Han
2019, 4, 9).
This corporate takeover was facilitated by the lack of a clear definition
of India’s smart city concept. The only hunch as to what an Indian smart
city is supposed to be relates to several core elements that were identi-
fied as crucial to the concept: adequate water supply, electricity supply,
sanitation, solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public
transport, affordable housing for the poor, digitalisation and IT tech-
nology, e-governance and citizen participation, sustainable environment,
citizen safety and security, and health and education (Smith et al. 2019,
525). These core elements are so widespread and meaningless that “the
Smart Cities Mission promises everything and nothing at the same time”
(Smith et al. 2019, 525). In the same vein, many of the core elements can
be understood as the provision of basic urban infrastructure development,
lumped together with some elements of a fashionable global concept that
has proven incapable of tackling problems of a social and environmental
nature (Smith et al. 2019, 525). Most of the projects proposed by the
smart cities selected resemble conventional physical urban infrastructure
projects attending to city dwellers’ basic needs (McDuie-Ra and Lai 2019,
365).
Powerful multinational companies could easily fill the definitional void
of India’s smart city concept. The urban planning rationales of Indian city
governments were incorporated into the neoliberal, market-oriented and
technocratic rationale of the global smart city movement and exposed to
global competition among smart cities from across the world (Basu 2019,
77–78). Instead of representing a new paradigm of environmentally and
socially sustainable urban planning, the Smart Cities Mission builds on
already existing neoliberal, elite-driven and top-down urban development
policies, further accelerating this development by linking it to the global
smart city movement (Basu 2019, 77; Smith et al. 2019, 530).
7.3.2 Case Study 2: National Energy Transitions and Germany’s

Energiewende
7.3.2.1 The Entanglements between Fossil Fuels and Renewable
Energies
The move towards renewable energy sources is not only taking place
in cities. Since states continue to be the most powerful actors in global
governance, they have a major responsibility to phase out fossil fuels and
increase the share of renewables in their energy matrix. Countries around
the world have become engaged in national energy transitions. And yet,
these energy transitions essentially rely on fossil fuels.
China is the leading emitter of CO2 worldwide, most of which is
derived from the burning of coal. More than 40 per cent of China’s
energy supply relies on coal (and a further 20 per cent relies on oil).
China has led the worldwide consumption of coal since 1985, and since
2000 the country’s coal production has grown by 162 per cent (IEA
2019a, 2020a). At the same time, China has become the leading country
in solar and wind energy, as well as hydropower; energy sources which are
nonetheless negligible in China’s energy supply when compared with the
share of fossil fuels (IEA 2020a; IRENA 2019). The US as the world’s
top oil producer and the second country after China in worldwide CO2
emissions (more than 80 per cent of its energy supply is derived from
fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas) is also the second country in
solar and wind power installation, as well as the third strongest country
in hydropower generation (IRENA 2019; IEA 2019b). Once the world
leader in coal production during the Industrial Revolution, the UK is
on the way to phasing out coal. In 2019, for the first time since the
1880s, the British economy produced its electricity without relying on
coal for an entire week (BBC 2019). Today, the UK is a leading country
in wind power generation and the leading country worldwide in off-shore
wind power (IRENA 2019). Simultaneously, the UK’s coal phase-out is
sustained by its heavy reliance on natural gas and oil (BBC 2019; IEA
2020d).
Countries from all world regions are heavily investing in solar and wind
energy. And since the creation of IRENA in 2009, the world has been
caught in an unprecedented solar and wind power boom. But at closer
inspection, renewables like solar and wind power still do not account for
more than a tiny chunk in countries’ overall energy supply. This includes
trailblazers in renewable energies like Denmark, Sweden and Costa Rica,
266 M. FRAUNDORFER
which are often presented as leaders in the global renewable energy tran-
sition. The only exception might be New Zealand, where solar and wind
power make up more than 20 per cent of the country’s total energy supply
(IEA 2020c). This global picture highlights that a transition towards
renewable energies like wind and solar power is a long-term process and
ultimately feeds on fossil fuels in the short and medium term. Most of
the advances in solar and wind power installations have been made in the
electricity sector rather than the transport and industry sectors. Hence,
this global energy transition is fraught with contradictions and dilemmas.
7.3.2.2 Energy Democracy in Germany

In many respects, Germany represents an ideal case study to exemplify
the opportunities and drawbacks in this global renewable energy bonanza.
As one of the leading economies and industrial powerhouses worldwide
and the leading economy in Europe, the roots of the German energy
transition go back to the 1970s, when the use of solar and wind power
as essential sources for electricity generation had been regarded as a
pipedream. Germany has established itself as a global leader in wind, solar
and bioenergy; the country was the driving force behind the creation
of IRENA; its Energiewende has made headlines across the world; and
the country is on the way to phasing out nuclear energy for good.
Despite these achievements, Germany continues to be Europe’s leading
coal producer and one of the ten leading coal producers worldwide. As in
other countries, Germany’s total energy supply continues to rely heavily
on fossil fuels, with about 80 per cent of its energy supply depending on
coal, oil and natural gas (IEA 2020b).
The term Energiewende is very often translated as energy transition.
To stay close to the original meaning of the German term Wende, a
much more appropriate translation would be “energy turn”, signalling
a turn towards new energy sources rather than a transition. Unlike in
many other countries, where energy transitions are principally organised
as top-down processes, led by the government and powerful industry,
Germany’s energy turn has been primarily shaped by civil society and
social movements in a bottom-up process. Denmark, which inspired many
German environmental activists, is one of the very few countries world-
wide whose turn to renewables has also been significantly shaped by
social movements, civil society and strong citizen involvement (Morris
and Jungjohann 2016, 3, 46, 102, 205).
The Energiewende has its roots in the 1970s when a strong anti-nuclear
movement started to campaign for a nuclear phase-out in Germany, which
became a reality only four decades later. Embedded in a traditionally
strong environmental and peace movement, the activities of the anti-
nuclear movement were further boosted by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear
disaster (Haas and Sander 2016, 121; Moore and Gustafson 2018, 10;
Paul 2018, 5). Through its active community, campaigning, lobbying and
advocacy efforts, “German civil society has engaged in a collective re-
imagination of the technologies of energy generation and consumption”
(Paul 2018, 7). In other words, social movements, as well as citizen and
community action, established new ways of thinking about energy and
energy production, challenging and criticising established patterns of elite
and capitalist decision-making (Haas and Sander 2016, 121–125; Moore
and Gustafson 2018, 2; Oelsner 2012, 104–105; Paul 2018, 7–8).
A first push for an institutionalisation of Germany’s civil society activ-
ities occurred in the early 1990s with the creation of the Green Party,
formed by environmental activists who had been part of the environ-
mental and anti-nuclear movements. The environmental cause gained
even more weight among Germany’s political class once the Green Party
entered a coalition with the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany)
in 1998 to form the country’s federal government under Chancellor
Gerhard Schröder (Haas and Sander 2016, 125). In this context, several
long-time environmental activists would also become influential on the
global stage in campaigning for an international renewable energy agency.
Hermann Scheer, a politician of the SPD, and Hans-Josef Fell, a member
of the Green Party, were the principal actors in lobbying the German
government under Chancellor Schröder to commit to the creation of
IRENA (Van de Graaf 2012). The key figure behind the creation of
IRENA, Hermann Scheer, became one of the world’s leading visionaries
of a global energy system 100 per cent powered by renewable energies
and sustained by social movements and intensive citizen participation
at the local and municipal levels (Scheer 2007, 2011). In many ways,
the creation of IRENA was an attempt of Scheer and others to upscale
Germany’s Energiewende to the global level.
Under the coalition government led by the SPD and the Green Party,
the German Parliament adopted the Renewable Energies Act in 2000,
principally developed by Hans-Josef Fell, Hermann Scheer and other
environmentally minded parliamentarians, against strong opposition from
the fossil fuels lobby (Bensmann 2010; Haas and Sander 2016, 125).
268 M. FRAUNDORFER
Amended several times since its initial adoption in 2000, the Renewable
Energies Act would become the main driver in transforming the coun-
try’s electricity system and further promoting and institutionalising citizen
participation as a fundamental element of Germany’s energy turn. The
new law institutionalised the priority of renewable energy sources over
the use of fossil fuels in the country’s electricity generation and guaran-
teed feed-in tariffs, providing citizens with privileged access to the grid
system (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie 2020). The tool
of guaranteed feed-in tariffs fixed for twenty years opened the energy
market to new players, such as citizens, local communities and coop-
eratives, to produce their own electricity, ensured grid connection and
set a minimum price for renewables with a profitable return (Morris and
Jungjohann 2016, 172). By receiving compensation for any excess elec-
tricity generated by a renewable energy plant (such as a privately owned
rooftop photovoltaic system or a community wind farm) and fed back
into the grid, the private and community use of renewable energy sources
became much more cost-effective and profitable, spurring a renewable
energy revolution among citizens and local communities. Between 2000
and 2020, the share of renewable energy sources in electricity gener-
ation grew from 6.6 per cent to 45.4 per cent, driven by wind and
photovoltaic installations and biomass (Haas and Sander 2016, 121–122;
Umweltbundesamt 2021).
Energy cooperatives (Energiegenossenschaften) have been a crucial
element of this success story. Between 2001 and 2014, the number of
energy cooperatives grew from 66 to 973, most of which were engaged
in solar and wind energy (Kalkbrenner and Roosen 2016, 61; Müller and
Holstenkamp 2015, 6; Oelsner 2012, 101). By 2011, more than half of
all photovoltaic installations were in the hands of citizens. Community-
organised solar societies, workshops and solar plants at the local and
municipal levels started mushrooming across the country (Oelsner 2012,
100). Through energy cooperatives, citizens can actively participate in,
and shape the processes of, energy generation and the management of
local energy systems rather than merely consuming energy (Kalkbrenner
and Roosen 2016, 60; see also Box 7.4).
Box 7.4: Energy Democracy

“Energy democracy unites demands for a decentralised, democratic,
renewable, and socially just energy future” (Paul 2018, 8). Relying on
bottom-up processes and participatory and deliberative actions, citizens
are involved in generating and consuming their own energy at the local
and municipal levels. These actions often take the form of energy cooper-
atives, municipalised energy grids or local/municipal community projects
as limited liability firms.
Source Paul (2018, 8).
Cooperatives aim to advance their members’ economic, social and

cultural interests, combining business interests with democratic values
of self-help, self-organisation and self-responsibility (Debor 2014, 4).
As decision-making is based on the one-member-one-vote principle, all
members can impact a cooperative’s goals and priorities (Debor 2014, 4;
Yildiz et al. 2015, 60). In Germany, energy cooperatives in electricity
generation have a long tradition reaching back to the early twentieth
century. After a long-lasting decline starting in the late 1930s, the tradi-
tion of energy cooperatives was only revived in the 2000s through the
political prioritisation of renewable energy sources in Germany’s elec-
tricity generation (Yildiz et al. 2015, 61–62). In addition to energy
cooperatives, citizens created their own limited liability companies to
manage community wind farms at the local and municipal levels. Both
cooperatives and community projects functioning as limited liability firms
have established the phenomenon of citizen-owned energy generation (or
Bürgerenergie) (Morris and Jungjohann 2016, 103).
By contrast, energy supply companies have played a minor role
in renewable electricity generation. In 2012, for example, citizens
contributed to a share of about 30 per cent of total investments in renew-
able electricity, while energy supply companies accounted for roughly 10
per cent. More specifically, energy supply companies accounted for a mere
3.5 per cent of the installed capacity of solar energy, 10.2 per cent of
the installed capacity of wind energy and 21.7 per cent of the installed
capacity of bioenergy (Yildiz 2014, 678–679).
7.3.2.3 Challenges, Dilemmas and Contradictions

Even though Germany is not a sun-blessed country or known for strong
winds, it has turned into a global leader in wind and solar power. On
sunny and windy days, Germany produces so much electricity from solar
270 M. FRAUNDORFER
and wind power that it has to export its excess electricity to neighbouring
countries, turning Germany into one of the leading electricity exporters
worldwide (AEE 2019). But it is even more notable that in contrast to
other world leaders in wind and solar energy, like China and the US,
Germany has become a leader in renewable energies by establishing a
form of energy democracy, based on the intensive involvement of citizens
and local communities in generating their own electricity and driving the
renewable electricity boom in the country.
Despite these notable achievements, Germany’s Energiewende is
confronting new challenges. Given the high surcharge burden derived
from guaranteed feed-in tariffs as well as transmission and distribution
costs, Germany (along with Denmark, another famous example of renew-
able energy democracy) has one of the highest electricity prices worldwide
(Amelang 2016; Moore and Gustafson 2018, 1; Morris and Jungjohann
2016, 104). Despite the high costs of electricity generation for private
users, the support for the Energiewende remains exceptionally high among
Germans, which can be credited to the role of the country’s energy
democracy (Morris and Jungjohann 2016, 104–106; Radtke 2020, 97).
Given its development as a nation-wide citizen and community project,
the rationale behind the Energiewende is deeply rooted in German society.
Owing to the substantial share of renewables and constant fluctuations
(wind and solar energy depend on sunny and windy days), the elec-
tricity grid has become more uneven, requiring huge modernisation and
upgrading (Amelang 2016). No less important, the country is dealing
with an oversupply in the (windy) north (due to a high number of wind
parks) and supply reduction in the south due to the nuclear phase-out, as
many nuclear power plants are located in the south (Moore and Gustafson
2018, 1, 8).
Germany’s nuclear phase-out also causes further trouble. Germany
had negotiated a nuclear phase-out in 2002 under the SPD and Green
Party coalition government led by Chancellor Schröder, which, however,
included several legal loopholes and did not define a specified deadline for
the shutdown of Germany’s nuclear power plants (Morris and Jungjohann
2016, 201–205). Yet, in a twist of historical irony, it would be up to the
chancellor of Germany’s conservative and traditionally nuclear-friendly
party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), to seal the nuclear phase-
out. In 2011, the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe led Chancellor Angela
Merkel to announce a complete nuclear phase-out by 2022, overruling
a law adopted one year earlier that had extended the running times of
Germany’s nuclear power plants (Haas and Sander 2016, 126).
Once Germany’s nuclear power plants go off-line, an alternative will
need to be found to provide the electricity grid’s baseload energy (the
minimum 24/7 energy supply which at the moment can only be provided
by conventional, large-scale power plants). In another ironic twist, this
alternative will most likely come from burning fossil fuels, such as coal
and natural gas—and increase Germany’s CO2 emissions (Moore and
Gustafson 2018, 11, 18). If, however, Germany wants to make progress
in reducing CO2 emissions, the country will need to confront a coal
phase-out as one of the Energiewende’s next steps (Haas and Sander 2016,
128).
The reform of the Renewable Energies Act in 2014 under Chancellor
Angela Merkel’s conservative government aimed to remedy some of these
challenges by restricting the expansion of renewable energies for the first
time since 2000 and replacing feed-in tariffs with auctions (Amelang
2016). Involving high upfront costs, the introduction of auctions favours
Germany’s big energy supply companies and conventional power plants.
The 20-year period of feed-in tariffs guaranteed in 2000 by the original
Renewable Energies Act has come to an end. And it seems that citizen
participation has reached its peak with fewer creations of new community
initiatives and less citizen involvement (Radtke 2020, 98, 103).
This melange of recent developments and new challenges might spell a
complete transformation of the Energiewende in the coming years, shifting
from a citizen-led project towards a more corporatist endeavour subject
to neoliberal market dynamics. The Energiewende will also have to get
a grip on the country’s heating and transport sector, where renewable
energy sources continue to be marginal. In the heating sector, renewables
make up a mere 15.2 per cent and in the transport sector an even less
impressive 7.3 per cent (Umweltbundesamt 2021).
7.4 Summary
7.4.1 Fragmentation and Westphalian Legacies
The 1920s witnessed the first global cooperation efforts on energy issues.
The World Power Conferences represented the first central global node of
international energy cooperation. Those conferences gained some global
epistemic and political authority through their framing of energy as an
272 M. FRAUNDORFER
essentially global issue, which led to the first comprehensive mapping of

worldwide energy reserves.
But a century later, global energy cooperation remains deeply frag-
mented. Although the consequences of energy production and consump-
tion are an inherently global and planetary challenge, ignoring any
political units and borders created by humans, energy governance remains
nationally organised. A global energy architecture with a central and over-
arching authority is largely non-existent. And political agendas on energy
production and consumption are splintered into a myriad of national
interests.
Some institutions, however, have turned into permanent and institu-
tionalised global nodes to concentrate, promote and advance some degree
of international energy cooperation. These institutions, however, address
either specific energy types, such as the IAEA (nuclear energy), OPEC
(oil) or IRENA (renewables). Or they are heavily euro-centric and biased
towards highly developed countries, such as the IEA. Given its dominant
focus on fossil fuels as well as the Western world, the IEA’s authority as
the central global node in the field of international energy cooperation
increasingly weakened in the 1990s and 2000s as a consequence of two
new developments: the rising impact of new energy consumers from the
global south on global energy consumption patterns; and the global push
towards renewable energies. The creation of IRENA, representing the
central global node in the field of renewable energy cooperation, signifi-
cantly challenged the IEA’s authority on energy. Unlike the IEA, IRENA
is a universal organisation with a global focus and headquartered in a
country in the global south.
The fragmented global energy governance architecture results from
the resilience of the Westphalian logic in energy issues. Energy is prin-
cipally regarded as a national security issue, guaranteeing energy security
for the sake of economic growth and development. In addition, global
energy production and consumption patterns are the pillars the political
and economic systems of our societies rest on. And these pillars are still
predominantly made of fossil fuels.
7.4.2 The Resilience of Fossil Fuels

Since our modern societies are extremely energy-intensive, there is no easy
way out of the global energy conundrum. It is even debatable if highly
energy-intensive civilisations like ours can be environmentally sustainable
in the long run. While there has been a global push towards renewable
energies across the world, with almost all actors, institutions and organ-
isations in global governance taking part in this revolution, our societies
are so dependent on fossil fuels that even the renewable energy revolution
is fired by fossil fuels. The global move towards renewable energies makes
complete sense, as phasing out fossil fuels is one of the most effective ways
of reducing CO2 emissions. But alternatives to fossil fuels are not neces-
sarily greener, more environmentally sustainable and more eco-friendly
than fossil fuels. Nuclear energy carries enormous environmental risks.
Hydropower has altered the global water cycle, creating massive envi-
ronmental damage. Biofuels are questionable from an ethical and moral
point of view and contribute to the unsustainable dynamics of global
food production. Wind and solar energy rely on rare-earth materials, the
exploitation of which is as socially and environmentally unsustainable as
the exploitation of other natural resources. And the higher the demand for
renewable energy technologies, the higher the social and environmental
risks of rare-earth mining.
The functioning of highly energy-intensive societies always comes with
(environmental) costs, no matter what the energy type. Hence, renewable
energies are indeed a (technological) solution to the current challenges of
the Anthropocene. But they are a solution that comes with new risks,
contradictions and challenges. Renewable energies are neither a silver
bullet nor an easy answer to the global energy challenge in the Anthro-
pocene. On top of that, they still have a long way to go, as the share of
renewable energies in countries’ energy production is still dwarfed by the
giants of coal, oil and natural gas. The renewable energy revolution has
been confined to the electricity sector, with the sectors of transport and
heating still largely untouched.
274 M. FRAUNDORFER
7.4.3 The Fossilisation of Renewable Energies: Corporatist vs

Citizen-Based Visions
In the same vein, the global renewable energy revolution risks repro-
ducing the very same processes of social and environmental exploitation
that represent the root causes of the global challenges of the Anthro-
pocene. Case study 1 illustrated how, in the wake of the global smart
city movement, a new powerful industry has been forming, relying
on the same corporatist logic of marketisation and commoditisation as
the fossil fuel industry. Through the global nodes of cities and the
transnational networks of multinational tech companies, this industry is
globally organised, highly influential and extremely effective in reshaping
national renewable energy transitions in line with corporate interests
and technocratic visions. As they are exclusively tailored to the goal of
CO2 emissions reductions, these business-focused and technology-based
visions risk marginalising environmental perspectives. With this limited,
technology-based focus on the global energy crisis, the global smart city
movement is incapable of providing socially and environmentally sustain-
able solutions. Instead, the global smart city movement’s corporatist and
technocratic logic risks exacerbating the global environmental crisis.
By contrast, case study 2 exemplified that energy production and
consumption can be thought differently. As in other countries, Germany’s
renewable energy turn is fraught with contradictions and dilemmas.
Nonetheless, Germany showed that energy sectors can be transformed
on the basis of citizen and community participation, local and munic-
ipal action and democratic decision-making. Germany’s citizen-based and
market-driven model demonstrates that renewable energy technologies
can benefit the public good rather than a tiny group of powerful corpo-
rations. In the global smart city movement, the major beneficiaries of
renewable energy technologies tend to be private and political elites at the
expense of local and municipal councils, democratic decision-making and
marginalised communities. But Germany’s model of democratic energy
governance is now threatened by the corporatist model and the country’s
continued reliance on fossil fuels.
Questions
• Explain the IEA’s legitimacy crisis and discuss which role fossil fuels
have played in the rise and fall of the IEA’s authority and legitimacy!
• Describe how the smart city movement replicates existing struc-

tures of power and dominance in global energy governance! Discuss
to what extent the global smart city movement can be seen as an
alternative to the state-centric structures of global governance!
• Examine the authority and legitimacy of IRENA and discuss how its
authority is affected by its narrow mandate!
• Discuss the different roles of market-driven approaches in the global
smart city movement and Germany’s energy turn! How can market-
driven approaches effectively steer socially and environmentally
sustainable approaches to the energy question?
• Discuss the tragic entanglements between global energy production
and the global environmental challenges of the Anthropocene! To
what extent can the terms Capitalocene and Technocene be used to
explain the impact of energy production and consumption patterns
on the Earth-system?
References
AEE—Agentur für Erneuerbare Energien. 2019. Verfehlte Ausbauziele und
hoher Stromexport: Was läuft in Deutschland schief? June 28 [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://www.unendlich-viel-energie.de/themen/strom/verfehlte-
ausbauziele-und-hoher-stromexport. Accessed 7 June 2021.
Aijaz, R., and K. Hoelscher. 2015. India’s Smart Cities Mission: An Assessment.
ORF Issue Brief 124: 1–12.
Albino, V., U. Berardi, and R.M. Dangelico. 2015. Smart Cities: Definitions,
Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives. Journal of Urban Technology 22:
3–21.
Amelang, S. 2016. The Reform of the Renewable Energy Act. Germany’s Energy
Transition Revamp Stirs Controversy Over Speed, Participation, June 29.
Clean Energy Wire [Online]. Available from: https://www.cleanenergywire.
org/dossiers/reform-renewable-energy-act. Accessed 7 June 2021.
Basu, I. 2019. Elite Discourse Coalitions and the Governance of ‘Smart
Spaces’: Politics, Power and Privilege in India’s Smart Cities Mission. Political
Geography 68: 77–85.
BBC. 2019. UK Has First Coal-Free Week for a Century, May 9 [Online].
Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48215896. Accessed
7 June 2021.
Bensmann, M. 2010. 10 Years Renewable Energies Act (EEG)-Looking Back in
a Success Story. Biogas Journal 4: 4–8.
276 M. FRAUNDORFER
Bonneuil, C., and J.-B. Fressoz. 2016. The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth,
History and Us. London: Verso Books.
BP. 2019. BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2019 [Online]. Available from:
https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corpor
ate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2019-full-rep
ort.pdf. Accessed 15 May 2020.
Brunnengräber, A., and C. Görg. 2017. Nuclear Waste in the Anthropocene:
Uncertainties and Unforeseeable Timescales in the Disposal of Nuclear Waste.
GAIA—Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society 26 (2): 96–99.
Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Emergie. 2020. Das Erneuerbare-
Energien-Gesetz [Online]. Available from: https://www.erneuerbare-energien.
de/EE/Redaktion/DE/Dossier/eeg.html?cms_docId=132292. Accessed 15
May 2020.
Carpenter, A. 2019. Oil Pollution in the North Sea: The Impact of Governance
Measures on Oil Pollution Over Several Decades. Hydrobiologia 845: 109–
127.
Chernow, R. 1998. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. New York: Random
House.
Crot, L. 2013. Planning for Sustainability in Non-Democratic Polities: The Case
of Masdar City. Urban Studies 50: 2809–2825.
Cugurullo, F. 2013. How to Build a Sandcastle: An Analysis of the Genesis
and Development of Masdar City. Journal of Urban Technology: Eco-Cities in
Pan-Asia: International Discourses, Local Practices 20: 23–37.
Cugurullo, F. 2016. Urban Eco-Modernisation and the Policy Context of New
Eco-City Projects: Where Masdar City Fails and Why. Urban Studies 53:
2417–2433.
Debor, S. 2014. The Socio-Economic Power of Renewable Energy Production
Cooperatives in Germany: Results of an Empirical Assessment. Wuppertal
Papers 187, Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie, Wuppertal.
Di Muzio, T. 2015. Carbon Capitalism: Energy, Social Reproduction and World
Order. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
Dutta, T., K.-H. Kim, M. Uchimiya, E.E. Kwon, B.-H. Jeon, A. Deep, and S.-
T. Yun. 2016. Global Demand for Rare Earth Resources and Strategies for
Green Mining. Environmental Research 150: 182–190.
Esu, F., and F. Sindico. 2016. IRENA and IEA: Moving Together Towards a
Sustainable Energy Future-Competition or Collaboration? Climate Law 6:
233–249.
European Commission. n.d. Smart Cities [Online]. Available from: https://
ec.europa.eu/info/eu-regional-and-urban-development/topics/cities-and-
urban-development/city-initiatives/smart-cities_en. Accessed 7 June 2021.
Golev, A., M. Scott, P.D. Erskine, S.H. Ali, and G.R. Ballantyne. 2014.
Rare Earths Supply Chains: Current Status, Constraints and Opportunities.
Resources Policy 41: 52–59.
Goormaghtigh, J. 1955. European Coal and Steel Community. New York:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Griffiths, S., and B.K. Sovacool. 2020. Rethinking the Future Low-Carbon City:
Carbon Neutrality, Green Design, and Sustainability Tensions in the Making
of Masdar City. Energy Research & Social Science 62: 1–9.
Gustafson, T. 2012. Wheel of Fortune the Battle for Oil and Power in Russia.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Haas, T., and H. Sander. 2016. Shortcomings and Perspectives of the German
Energiewende. Socialism and Democracy 30 (2): 121–143.
Harks, E. 2010. The International Energy Forum and the Mitigation of Oil
Market Risks. In Global Energy Governance: The New Rules of the Game, ed.
A. Goldthau and J. Witte, 247–268. Berlin: Global Public Policy Institute.
IAEA. 2016. Framework and Challenges for Initiating Multinational Cooperation
for the Development of a Radioactive Waste Repository. IAEA Nuclear Energy
Series. NW-T-1.5. Vienna: IAEA.
IEA. 2019a. Coal Information Overview [Online]. Available from: https://
iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/c40f0317-f8e6-4f00-b183-27a24c7b6a8f/
Coal_Information_2019_Overview.pdf. Accessed 15 May 2020.
IEA. 2019b. Oil Information Overview [Online]. Available from: https://iea.
blob.core.windows.net/assets/9faca21e-8f10-43c0-a7da-bab0c275773f/Oil_
Information_2019_Overview.pdf. Accessed 15 May 2020.
IEA. 2020a. CO2 Emissions by Energy Source, World 1990–2017 [Online].
Available from: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics?country=WORLD&
fuel=CO2%20emissions&indicator=CO2%20emissions%20by%20energy%20s
ource. Accessed 15 May 2020.
IEA. 2020b. Germany [Online]. Available from: https://www.iea.org/countr
ies/germany. Accessed 15 May 2020.
IEA. 2020c. New Zealand [Online]. Available from: https://www.iea.org/cou
ntries/new-zealand. Accessed 15 May 2020.
IEA. 2020d. United Kingdom [Online]. Available from: https://www.iea.org/
countries/united-kingdom. Accessed 15 May 2020.
IQAIR. 2021. World’s Most Polluted Cities 2020 (PM2.5) [Online]. Available
from: https://www.iqair.com/world-most-polluted-cities. Accessed 15 June
2021.
IRENA. 2015. IRENA Opens Doors on New Permanent Headquarters in
Masdar City [Online]. Available from: https://www.irena.org/newsroom/
pressreleases/2015/Jun/IRENA-Opens-Doors-on-New-Permanent-Headqu
arters-in-Masdar-City. Accessed 15 May 2020.
278 M. FRAUNDORFER
IRENA. 2019. Country Rankings [Online]. Available from: https://www.irena.

org/Statistics/View-Data-by-Topic/Capacity-and-Generation/Country-Ran
kings. Accessed 15 May 2020.
Jasanoff, M. 2017. The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World. London:
William Collins.
Joss, S., F. Sengers, D. Schraven, F. Caprotti, and Y. Dayot. 2019. The Smart
City as Global Discourse: Storylines and Critical Junctures Across 27 Cities.
Journal of Urban Technology 26 (1): 3–34.
Kalantzakos, S. 2017. China and the Geopolitics of Rare Earths. New York:
Kalkbrenner, B.J., and J. Roosen. 2016. Citizens’ Willingness to Participate in
Local Renewable Energy Projects: The Role of Community and Trust in
Germany. Energy Research & Social Science 13: 60–70.
Klinger, J.M. 2017. Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar
Landscapes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Klinger, J.M. 2018. Rare Earth Elements: Development, Sustainability and Policy
Issues. The Extractive Industries and Society 5: 1–7.
Koide, H. 2014. Living in a Contaminated World. In Crisis Without End: The
Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe,
ed. H. Caldicott. New York: The New Press.
Li, B., N. Wang, J. Wan, S. Xiong, H. Liu, S. Li, and R. Zhao. 2016. In-Situ
Gamma-Ray Survey of Rare-Earth Tailings Dams—A Case Study in Baotou
and Bayan Obo Districts, China. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 151:
304–310.
M’Gonigle, R.M., and M.W. Zacher. 1979. Pollution, Politics, and International
Law: Tankers at Sea. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Masdar Institute and IRENA. 2015. Renewable Energy Prospects: United Arab
Emirates. REmap 2030 Analysis. Abu Dhabi: IRENA.
Maughan, T. 2015. The Dystopian Lake Filled by the World’s Tech Lust. BBC,
April 2 [Online]. Available from: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/201
50402-the-worst-place-on-earth. Accessed 7 June 2021.
McDuie-Ra, D., and L. Lai. 2019. Smart Cities, Backward Frontiers: Digital
Urbanism in India’s North-East. Contemporary South Asia 27 (3): 358–372.
Mitchell, T. 2011. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. London:
Verso Books.
Moore, J., and T. Gustafson. 2018. Where to Now? Germany Rethinks Its
Energy Transition. German Politics and Society 36 (3): 1–22.
Morris, C., and A. Jungjohann. 2016. Energy Democracy: Germany’s
ENERGIEWENDE to Renewables. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mousseau, T. 2014. The Biological Consequences of Chornobyl and Fukushima.
In Crisis Without End: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the
Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe, ed. H. Caldicott. New York: The New Press.
Müller, F. 2017. IRENA as a Glocal Actor: Pathways Towards Energy Govern-

mentality. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research 30 (3):
306–322.
Müller, J.R., and L. Holstenkamp. 2015. Zum Stand von Energiegenossen-
schaften in Deutschland. Aktualisierter Überblick über Zahlen und Entwick-
lungen zum 31.12.2014. Arbeitspapierreihe Wirtschaft & Recht, Leuphana
Universität Lüneburg 20: 1–12.
NASA Earth Observatory. 2012. Rare Earth in Bayan Obu [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/77723/rare-earth-in-
bayan-obo. Accessed 7 June 2021.
Odell, P.R. 1986. Oil and World Power. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Oelsner, G. 2012. Zivilgesellschaft als Motor der Energiewende. Solarzeitalter. 4:
100–105.
Overland, I., and G. Reischl. 2018. A Place in the Sun? IRENA’s Position
in the Global Energy Governance Landscape. International Environmental
Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 18: 335–350.
Paul, F.C. 2018. Deep Entanglements: History, Space and (Energy) Struggle in
the German Energiewende. Geoforum 91: 1–9.
Paylor, A. 2017. The Social-Economic Impact of Shale Gas Extraction: A Global
Perspective. Third World Quarterly 38: 340–355.
Poirot-Delpech, S., and L. Raineau. 2016. Nuclear Waste Facing the Test of
Time: The Case of the French Deep Geological Repository Project. Science
and Engineering Ethics 22: 1813–1830.
Praharaj, S., and H. Han. 2019. Cutting Through the Clutter of Smart City
Definitions: A Reading into the Smart City Perceptions in India. City, Culture
and Society 18: 1–10.
Praharaj, S., J.H. Han, and S. Hawken. 2018. Urban Innovation Through Policy
Integration: Critical Perspectives from 100 Smart Cities Mission in India. City,
Culture and Society 12: 35–43.
Price-Smith, A.T. 2015. Oil, Illiberalism, and War An Analysis of Energy and
US Foreign Policy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Radtke, J. 2020. Das Jahrhundertprojekt der Nachhaltigkeit am Scheideweg: Wie
kann die Energiewende in Deutschland breite gesellschaftliche Unterstützung
finden? Zeitschrift Für Politikwissenschaft 30: 97–111.
Rajneesh, D., K. Vinoy, and K. Aniket. 2018. Environment and Big Data: Role
in Smart Cities of India. Resources 7 (4): 1–10.
Ritchie, H. 2017. How Long Before We Run Out of Fossil Fuels? [Online].
Available from: https://ourworldindata.org/how-long-before-we-run-out-of-
fossil-fuels#licence. Accessed 15 May 2020.
Rodrigues, L.A., and I.L. Sauer. 2015. Exploratory Assessment of the Economic
Gains of a Pre-Salt Oil Field in Brazil. Energy Policy 87: 486–495.
280 M. FRAUNDORFER
Russ, D. 2019. The World Energy Council as an Archive for Research on Energy
History. Journal of Energy History/Revue d’histoire de l’Énergie 4: 1–9.
Scheer, H. 2007. Energy Autonomy: The Economic, Social and Technological Case
for Renewable Energy. London: Earthscan.
Scheer, H. 2011. The Energy Imperative: 100 Percent Renewable Now. Abingdon:
Routledge.
Smil, V. 2006. Transforming the Twentieth Century: Volume 2: Technical Innova-
tions and Their Consequences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Smith, M. 2011. The Deepwater Horizon Disaster: An Examination of the Spill’s
Impact on the Gap in International Regulations of Oil Pollution from Fixed
Platforms. Emory International Law Review 25 (3): 1477–1516.
Smith, R.M., P.A. Pathak, and G. Agrawal. 2019. India’s ‘Smart’ Cities Mission:
A Preliminary Examination into India’s Newest Urban Development Policy.
Journal of Urban Affairs 41 (4): 518–534.
Söderström, O., T. Paasche, and F. Klauser. 2014. Smart Cities as Corporate
Storytelling. City 18 (3): 307–320.
Starr, S. 2014. The Contamination of Japan with Radioactive Cesium. In Crisis
Without End: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima
Nuclear Catastrophe, ed. H. Caldicott. New York: The New Press.
Umweltbundesamt. 2021. Erneuerbare Energien in Zahlen, March 4 [Online].
Available from: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/klima-energie/
erneuerbare-energien/erneuerbare-energien-in-zahlen#statusquo. Accessed 7
June 2021.
UN-HABITAT 2016. Urbanization and Development: Emerging Futures.
Nairobi, UN-HABITAT.
UNCTAD. 2018. Review of Maritime Transport 2018. New York and Geneva:
UN.
Urpelainen, J., and T. Van de Graaf. 2015. The International Renewable
Energy Agency: A Success Story in Institutional Innovation? International
Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 15: 159–177.
Van de Graaf, T. 2012. How IRENA Is Reshaping the Global Energy Architec-
ture. European Energy Review 29: 1–7.
Van de Graaf, T. 2013a. Fragmentation in Global Energy Governance Explaining
the Creation of IRENA. Global Environmental Politics 13 (3): 14–33.
Van de Graaf, T. 2013b. The Politics and Institutions of Global Energy Gover-
nance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Vanolo, A. 2014. Smartmentality: The Smart City as Disciplinary Strategy. Urban
Studies 51 (5): 883–898.
World Economic Forum. 2019. Unprecedented Global Alliance for Smart City
Technology Launched to Counter Growing Tensions, October 10 [Online].
Available from: https://www.weforum.org/press/2019/10/unprecedented-
global-alliance-for-smart-city-technology-launched-to-counter-growing-ten
sions/. Accessed 7 June 2021.
World Energy Council. 2021. About Us [Online]. Available from: https://www.
worldenergy.org/about-us. Accessed 7 June 2021.
Wright, R., H. Shin, and F. Trentmann. 2013. From World Power Conference to
World Energy Council. 90 Years of Energy Cooperation. 1923–2013. London:
World Energy Council.
Yablokov, A. V. 2014. What the World Health Organization, International
Atomic Energy Agency, and International Commission on Radiological
Protection Have Falsified. In Crisis Without End: The Medical and Ecolog-
ical Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe, ed. H. Caldicott.
New York: The New Press.
Yildiz, Ö. 2014. Financing Renewable Energy Infrastructures Via Financial
Citizen Participation—The Case of Germany. Renewable Energy 68: 677–685.
Yildiz, Ö., J. Rommel, S. Debor, L. Holstenkamp, F. Mey, J.R. Müller, J. Radtke,
and J. Rognli. 2015. Renewable Energy Cooperatives as Gatekeepers or Facil-
itators? Recent Developments in Germany and a Multidisciplinary Research
Agenda. Energy Research & Social Science 6: 59–73.
CHAPTER 8
Global Environmental Governance
8.1 The Environment in the Anthropocene

The previous chapters illustrated in different ways how our anthropogenic
impact over the last two hundred years has relentlessly driven greenhouse
gas emissions, resulting in rising temperatures and more unstable and
extreme weather patterns and climate events. Humanity’s development
since the Industrial Revolution, and particularly after the Second World
War (fuelling the Great Acceleration), has reshaped the environment
more fundamentally than ever before in human history. The Anthro-
pocene makes us realise how profoundly interconnected human activities,
weather patterns and climate events are. The previous chapters showed
that global environmental challenges like the spread of infectious diseases,
the environmental consequences of global food production, the pollution
of freshwater systems and energy production and consumption patterns
are all intrinsically interconnected.
As explained in Chapter 7, fossil fuels (and greenhouse gas emissions)
are hyperobjects that stretch back millions of years and extend across the
entire planet. Over the last two centuries, these relics of a distant past
in the planet’s history have fuelled humanity’s unprecedented rise to a
global civilisation, more globalised, interconnected and interdependent
than ever before. But only the global consequences of our anthropogenic
impact on the Earth-system and the multiple ecological crises we are
facing have gradually made most of us aware of how dependent we are on

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88156-6_8
284 M. FRAUNDORFER
a stable and healthy climate. For the last two centuries, modern societies
have conducted a planetary experiment, severely disrupting the planet’s
weather and climate patterns. The global environmental governance archi-
tecture emerged to tackle the environmental consequences of this global
experiment, particularly as far as greenhouse gas emissions are concerned.
8.2 The Global Environmental

8.2.1 A Maze with no Centre
The first international attempt at protecting the environment dates from
1900 when European colonial powers met in London to sign the Conven-
tion for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa.
While European powers became increasingly interested in protecting wild
animals in their colonies from uncontrolled slaughter, they also aimed to
ensure sufficient stocks of wild animals for colonial hunting parties. But
the convention never entered into force (Andresen et al. 2012, 11; IUCN
2004, 3). For a first multilateral environmental treaty to enter into force,
another three decades had to pass. In 1933, the Convention Relative to
the Preservation of Flora and Fauna in their Natural State was signed in
London and entered into force in 1936 (IUCN 2004, 3). Although of
limited impact, the convention included a “Red List” of threatened and
endangered species, a terminology still used today (Andresen et al. 2012,
11).
As a consequence of humanity’s spectacular development after the
Second World War, environmental issues like species extinction, fresh-
water pollution, air pollution, resource extraction and environmental
degradation have turned from local or regionally confined challenges into
truly planetary challenges, giving rise to the first international environ-
mental institutions (Hale 2020, 204). In 1948, the International Union
for the Protection of Nature (later renamed as the International Union
for Conservation of Nature—IUCN) was established in Fontainebleau,
France, as the first international organisation on environmental issues.
Since its birth, the organisation has brought together governments and
civil society organisations to stimulate international cooperation on the
protection and conservation of nature (IUCN 2020). The WWF (the
8 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE 285
World Wide Fund for Nature), established in 1961, became the first inter-
national environmental NGO. And Greenpeace was launched in 1979
(Andresen et al. 2012, 3, 11).
In 1972, the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment
was the first of several environmental mega-conferences that became the
principal drivers of international and transnational environmental coop-
eration and the rapid evolution of a global environmental governance
architecture. These mega-conferences—1972 in Stockholm, the 1992
UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro
(the famous Earth Summit), the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable
Development in Johannesburg and the 2012 UN Conference on Sustain-
able Development, once again in Rio de Janeiro,—turned environmental
issues into top political priorities, reshaped the international agenda and
encouraged the creation of the principal institutions and platforms of the
global environmental governance architecture. These mega-conferences
also provided a major platform for the involvement of non-state actors.
With each conference since 1972, civil society has become better organ-
ised, more effectively funded and more deeply immersed in global
environmental governance structures (Saunier and Meganck 2007, 13).
One of the principal legacies of the 1972 Stockholm Conference was
the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),
the central authority in global environmental governance (Andresen et al.
2012, 3–4; Ivanova 2016, 186). UNEP was designed to function as “an
anchor institution and focal point for environmental action, coordinating
environmental programmes within the UN system” (Ivanova 2012, 572).
Unlike the WHO, the WTO, the FAO or the ILO, UNEP is not a
specialised UN agency but a mere subsidiary body to the UN General
Assembly. Since the 1990s, there has been ongoing talk about an urgent
reform of UNEP, including suggestions to elevate UNEP’s status to a
specialised agency with a global mandate similar to that of the WHO on
health, the WTO on trade, the FAO on food or the ILO on labour issues
(Ivanova 2012, 565; 2016, 189).
In 1997, Germany, Brazil, Singapore and South Africa voiced a
lingering sense of frustration with the inability of the UN system, and
particularly UNEP, to tackle global environmental challenges and called
for the creation of a World Environment Organisation, with a status
similar to that of other international organisations (Ivanova 2016, 193).
Ever since, a global movement has grown to mobilise support for creating
286 M. FRAUNDORFER
a World Environment Organisation, with the EU and the African Union

as its most vocal supporters (Biermann 2000, 24; Ivanova 2016, 195).
Back in 1972, UNEP was intentionally designed as a mere subsidiary
body to create a flexible and fast-moving institution capable of putting the
environment at the centre of the UN’s work (Ivanova 2016, 188). As a
concession to developing countries, UNEP’s headquarters was established
in Nairobi, Kenya. Given the geographical distance to key UN bodies
and organisations in New York and Geneva and lacking information and
communication technologies in the 1970s and 1980s to communicate
effectively over these long distances, UNEP was never able to deliver
on its principal mandate. Given UNEP’s weakness, inefficiency and inef-
fectiveness in functioning as a global and overarching environmental
authority, many international organisations and platforms have built up
their own environmental programmes. This proliferation of agencies,
programmes and organisations led to overlapping mandates, lacking coor-
dination and duplication of efforts (Biermann 2000, 24). Owing to its
location in an African country, however, UNEP became closely involved
with the environmental challenges of developing countries and turned
into an important actor in supporting developing countries, building up
environmental ministries and sharpening their focus on environmental
issues (Ivanova 2012, 580).
UNEP was finally reformed at the Rio + 20 Conference—The United
Nations Conference on Sustainable Development—in 2012. Instead of
transforming UNEP into a World Environment Organisation, govern-
ments went for the less ambitious route, merely expanding some of
UNEP’s decision-making structures. UNEP’s governing council was
replaced with a new universal platform, the United Nations Environment
Assembly, “the world’s highest decision-making body on the environ-
ment” (UNEP, n.d.). UNEP’s authority was reconfirmed, and its budget
increased (Ivanova 2016, 183–185). Despite these reforms, a central
global environmental institution is fundamentally lacking.
8.2.2 The Montreal Protocol: Phasing Out Ozone-Depleting

Substances
Apart from mega-conferences and UNEP, another central pillar of the
global environmental governance architecture is represented by more than
1300 multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), which address all
possible aspects of the environment (Hale 2020, 204), including deserti-

fication, wildlife, natural habitats, marine pollution, wetlands, migratory
birds, biological diversity and so forth. These agreements proliferated after
the Stockholm Conference in 1972 and received a further boost after the
1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Each of these MEAs comes with
its own administrative infrastructures, such as a permanent secretariat and
annual conferences (so-called Conferences of the Parties—COPs) as the
highest decision-making body (Andresen et al. 2012, 15). Despite their
awareness-raising activities regarding multifaceted global environmental
challenges, like desertification, migratory birds and marine pollution,
most of these MEAs have remained largely ineffective in tackling these
challenges (Andresen et al. 2012, 16).
Three of these agreements have become particularly famous: the
Montreal Protocol, the Kyoto Protocol and the UNFCCC climate negoti-
ations. The Montreal Protocol acquired fame as one of the most successful
MEAs and environmental negotiations in history. The latter two have
become household names in daily news broadcasts because of their global
mandate to tackle CO2 emissions.
In 1974, scientists discovered that human-made substances had a
damaging effect on the ozone layer, the region in our planet’s strato-
sphere that protects us from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation (see Box 8.1).
Scientists found that so-called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), developed in
the 1930s, were contributing to a gradual thinning of the ozone layer
and thus reducing our protection from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation.
This gradual thinning became known as the “ozone hole”. The most
serious thinning was discovered over the Antarctic in 1985. In the same
year, governments adopted the Vienna Convention for the Protection of
the Ozone Layer. And two years later, the Montreal Protocol was born
(Skjærseth 2012, 38–39).
Box 8.1: Understanding the Ozone Layer

Paul J. Crutzen, the chemist who famously coined the term of the Anthro-
pocene, Mario J. Molina and Frank Sherwood Rowland received the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for their pioneering scientific discoveries which
significantly contributed to a better understanding of the ozone layer in
the 1970s and 1980s.
The British inventor, environmentalist and futurist James Lovelock was
one of the first scientists in the world to show through measurements
288 M. FRAUNDORFER
in England, Ireland and the Antarctic in the 1960s and early 1970s that
CFCs had spread worldwide. At that time, Lovelock was not aware of
the relationship between CFCs and the ozone layer and believed these
substances to be harmless.
Only years later, scientists like Crutzen and many others would cast
a new light on Lovelock’s discovery and its threatening implications for
humanity.
Sources NobelPrize.org (2020), Science Museum (2019).
Since CFCs were very stable as chemical substances and could be

cheaply produced, they were widely used in refrigerators, air condi-
tioning, aerosols, plastic foams and fire extinguishers (Skjærseth 2012,
39). Through the rapid worldwide increase in the use of refrigerators, air
conditioning and other objects that used CFCs after the Second World
War, these chemical substances turned into a serious global environ-
mental challenge, affecting countries worldwide (Skjærseth 2012, 39).
But until the mid-1980s, scientific knowledge about the ozone layer was
scarce. And the depletion of the ozone layer could only be scientifically
proven in 1985, validating the theory about the damaging effects of CFCs
developed one decade earlier (NobelPrize.org 2020; Skjærseth 2012, 40).
Negotiations of an international treaty on phasing out CFCs started
in 1981. Two major fronts emerged in the negotiation process between
the US and Western Europe, the leading consumer and manufacturing
markets for CFCs at that time. The US consumed most of its own CFCs,
while Western Europe exported most of its manufactured CFCs. The
US favoured a complete ban of CFCs, while Western European coun-
tries supported a reduction of the chemical substances (Skjærseth 2012,
40–41). Given the two leading markets’ clash of interests over CFCs, the
first international treaty on the ozone layer, the Vienna Convention, did
not include any targets.
Further negotiations on the future time plan of a phase-out of CFCs
followed between the two players and resulted in the Montreal Protocol
in 1987. The Montreal Protocol is known today as one of the most
successful environmental treaties. But in 1987, the negotiations between
the US and Europe almost collapsed. The compromise that was finally
found between the two rivals envisaged a reduction in CFCs by 50 per
cent by 1999 against the 1986-baseline in developed countries. In another
conference in London, an agreement was struck to completely phase-out
the production of CFCs and halons by the year 2000 (Skjærseth 2012,
40–41). Since 2000, the Montreal Protocol has been amended several
times to phase-out approximately 100 ozone-depleting substances, and
all UN member states have ratified the treaty (Andersen et al. 2013,
607–608; Skjærseth 2012, 42, 44).
The success of the Montreal Protocol was not due to governments’
sudden discovery of their passion for the environment. On the contrary,
the negotiations were dominated by economic and financial interests,
which almost led to the collapse of the negotiation process. Ultimately,
the negotiations were successful because of a mix of fortunate circum-
stances. The vast majority of ozone-depleting substances were produced
by a small number of companies in Western Europe and North America.
Most of those companies were already working on alternatives to CFCs
since the 1970s. The international cooperation efforts resulting in the
Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol significantly accelerated
the research and development of these alternatives so that governments
could rely on the support of the chemical industry. And the negotiations
almost completely excluded developing countries, which did not play
a major role in producing CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances
(Skjærseth 2012, 42).
As a consequence of this improbable success story, the emissions of
ozone-depleting substances peaked in the late 1980s and have decreased
to pre-1960 levels. As CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances can
take between several decades and up to one century to decompose, the
ozone layer has still not completely recovered and is predicted to be fully
restored by 2065 (Andersen et al. 2013, 607, 610).
8.2.3 The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

and the Kyoto Protocol: Phasing Out CO2 Emissions?
International efforts to reduce global CO2 emissions initially followed the
pattern of the successful phase-out of ozone-depleting substances. After
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had predicted
a temperature increase of between 1.5 and 4.5 °C over the following
century in its first report in 1990 (see also Box 8.2), scientists called for
urgent international action (Hale et al. 2013, 254). Two years later, at
the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, governments called into life the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as the prin-
cipal global governance mechanism to tackle CO2 emissions. Initially, the
290 M. FRAUNDORFER
UNFCCC did not impose binding emissions targets. Instead, through

a step-by-step approach, the UNFCCC aimed to bring all countries on
board to study the problem, share information and build trust before
governments were invited to commit to serious negotiations and move
gradually to more ambitious measures. This was the rationale behind the
1985 Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, the
1987 Montreal Protocol and subsequent amendments (Hale et al. 2013,
254).
Box 8.2: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

The theory of the greenhouse effect was developed by scientists in the
nineteenth century, but more systematic scientific research on weather
patterns, the Earth-system and the planet’s climate did not start before the
1950s. And it was only in the 1980s that these issues acquired importance
on the political agenda. To commit governments worldwide to an inter-
governmental negotiation process on greenhouse gas emissions reductions
required the establishment of an international authority that was capable of
concentrating, simplifying and synthesising the complexity and diverging
views present in climate science.
Hence, UNEP and the World Meteorological Organisation created the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to demo-
cratically consolidate a scientific consensus on climate change and lend
credibility to the issue. In the following years, the existence of the IPCC
would play a paramount role in the creation of the UNFCCC, and the
IPCC’s reports and analyses have formed the basis of the UNFCCC
climate negotiations ever since.
Sources Agrawala (1998), Andresen and Boasson (2012).
The first few steps were promising. The successful creation of the
UNFCCC in 1992 was followed by the start of serious negotiations in
1995, which resulted in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol: an international treaty
that committed developed countries, the so-called Annex 1 countries, to
an average 5.2 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions against the 1990-
baseline (Andresen and Boasson 2012, 52; Hale et al. 2013, 254). As in
the case of phasing out ozone-depleting substances, a first step, albeit not
sufficient to tackle the problem, was taken by developed countries, which
was then supposed to lead to more ambitious emissions targets and the
gradual involvement of developing countries.
But before the UNFCCC process was even in a position to articulate

more ambitious goals, it had run into problems. The US, the top green-
house gas emitter in the 1990s, never ratified the Kyoto Protocol because
the US Senate objected to ratifying any international treaty that did not
include measures for major emitters from the developing world. Since the
Kyoto Protocol required the ratification of countries representing 55 per
cent of global emissions, the treaty only entered into force in 2005 (Hale
et al. 2013, 254).
Compared with the phase-out of ozone-depleting substances, it
became clear that the task of global CO2 emissions reductions unfolded
at an entirely different level. While the phase-out of ozone-depleting
substances did not require the initial involvement of developing coun-
tries, this was very different in the case of greenhouse gases, with major
developing countries like China, India, Russia and others as leading emit-
ters of carbon dioxide. From a historical perspective, it had initially made
sense to exclude developing countries from legally binding CO2 reduc-
tion targets (Depledge 2015, 78; Hale et al. 2013, 255). But since the late
1990s, the picture has completely changed. Whereas in the 1990s the US
and EU member states dominated global CO2 emissions, major devel-
oping countries have caught up since the 2000s. The top three global
CO2 emitters today are China, the US and India. As a case in point, in
2017, China alone emitted almost as much CO2 (9.8 billion tonnes) as
the US (5.3 billion tonnes), India (2.5 billion tonnes) and the EU (3.5
billion tonnes) together (Ritchie and Roser 2017).
However, the UNFCCC process was designed from the beginning
for developed countries to lead CO2 reduction measures. That’s why
the framework convention divided the world into so-called Annex 1 and
non-Annex 1 parties. Annex 1 parties referred to the countries from the
developed world and the former Soviet bloc, while non-Annex 1 parties
referred to all remaining countries in the developing world (Depledge
2015, 75). Until the UNFCCC summit in 2007 in Bali, developing coun-
tries, among them major emitters like China or India, entirely rejected
even discussing any commitments, not least because of the devastating
example given by the US, which as the leading CO2 emitter in the 1990s
had not even joined the Kyoto Protocol (Depledge 2015, 76).
Since the Kyoto Protocol was set to expire in 2012, negotiations for an
extension of the treaty had already started in 2007, only two years after
the treaty had finally entered into force. One month before the end of
the treaty in 2012, some of its members negotiated a weak and rather
292 M. FRAUNDORFER
symbolic extension until 2020 (Hale et al. 2013, 256–257). After all,
the Kyoto Protocol passed into history as a major failure. According to
UNFCCC calculations, the measures contained in the Kyoto Protocol
prevented roughly 1500 megatonnes of CO2 emissions. China alone,
however, emitted more CO2 between 2009 and 2011 than the Kyoto
Protocol prevented (Hale et al. 2013, 258).
The artificial divide of the world into two categories, Annex 1 and
non-Annex 1 countries, significantly complicated the climate negotiations.
But another major limitation of the UNFCCC process severely added
to undermining the effectiveness of any negotiated outcome. UNFCCC
emissions targets exclude emissions from international aviation and ship-
ping. These emissions were excluded due to their complexity in allocating
national responsibilities, as well as pressure from states like Saudi Arabia
and the US (Depledge 2015, 79).
Mitigation strategies for these sectors were relegated to the Inter-
national Civil Aviation Organisation and the International Maritime
Organisation (Evans and Smith 2015, 210), whose international authority
is severely limited. The International Civil Aviation Organisation was able
to adopt an agreement on CO2 emissions reductions from international
flights. After a pilot phase from 2021 through 2023, the agreement, the
Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, will
kick off in 2024 (ICAO, n.d.). Among several weaknesses, the agree-
ment excludes a broad range of international flights that directly affect
state interests, such as flights involving police, military, customs and state
aircraft. The measures included in the agreement do not require a reduc-
tion of international flights and greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, the
agreement developed a market-driven system of carbon offsets which
requires participating countries to offset greenhouse gas emissions from
aviation with emissions reductions in other areas, such as the planting of
trees. Carbon offsetting schemes have been shown as largely ineffective
(Stevenson 2021, 92). On top of that, the scheme is entirely voluntary,
and the International Civil Aviation Organisation has no authority to
enforce it (ICAO, n.d.; Stevenson 2021, 92–94).
Governments’ reluctance to put effective pressure on the aviation
industry resulted in a significant increase in CO2 emissions in these
sectors. CO2 emissions from international transport have risen from
approximately 620 million tonnes to 1.16 billion tonnes between 1995
and 2017. Not only did international transport emissions double within
twenty years. In 2017, they also accounted for slightly less than the
combined CO2 emissions of all African countries (1.33 billion tonnes in

2017) (Ritchie and Roser 2017). Both sectors are effectively fuelled by oil
and symbolise the unsustainable nature of existing energy patterns under-
pinning the global political and economic system (Evans and Smith 2015,
210).
In the same vein, the UNFCCC negotiations allocated emissions from
manufacturing to the producing country rather than the consuming
country. This calculation completely ignores the energy patterns of global
production and value chains in a global system where most of the manu-
facturing is carried out in developing countries which had traditionally
been exempt from emissions targets. Their emissions are merely exported
to consuming countries in the developed world (Depledge 2015, 80).
Thus, CO2 emissions resulting from products made in China and India,
for instance, and consumed in countries like the UK, the US and other
high-income countries, are hidden from the climate negotiations. As in
the case of the aviation and marine transport industry, the UNFCCC
climate negotiations are unable to exercise susbtantial pressure on manu-
facturing industries in developing countries, nor do they have much
influence on the consumption patterns of societies in developed countries.
Unlike the Montreal Protocol, the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol
have largely failed in reducing, halting or reversing greenhouse gas
emissions. In contrast to the successful reduction and phase-out of ozone-
depleting substances, global CO2 emissions are not declining. The world’s
leading emitters are too dependent on greenhouse gas emissions from
fossil fuels for their economic growth and development. Fossil fuels
continue to dominate global energy patterns. And the so-called renew-
able energy transition resembles a timid turn towards renewable energy
sources in the electricity sector, which still account for a neglectable share
in global energy production.
What’s more, the UNFCCC negotiations have entirely ignored cross-
border energy patterns. CO2 emissions from cross-border energy patterns
like international trade, manufacturing and transport are excluded from
the climate negotiations. No less important, the UNFCCC negotiations
have also been trapped in a state-centric logic. UNFCCC negotiations are
determined by governments’ national (economic) interests, negotiating
national plans and voluntary national emissions reduction targets. In this
highly intergovernmental negotiation process, major emitters like China
and the US are reluctant to cede authority to an international or even
supranational entity (Depledge 2015, 80).
294 M. FRAUNDORFER
These circumstances give sufficient reason to doubt the potential of

the widely celebrated Paris Climate Agreement, adopted at the twenty-
first UNFCCC summit in Paris in 2015, to serve as a catalyst for radically
reducing global CO2 emissions. The Paris Climate Agreement represents
an unprecedented breakthrough in the UNFCCC climate negotiations
in the sense that it symbolises the first collective agreement adopted by
all countries to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. Negotiations of such an
agreement had repeatedly failed. Unlike in the past, both developed and
developing countries, including the large new emitters China and India,
agreed to a climate treaty that aims to limit the temperature increase to
no more than 1.5° C (Clémençon 2016; Watson et al. 2019). But how
this ambitious target is to be achieved remains a mystery.
The Paris Agreement does not include binding emissions targets or
timetables as the Kyoto Protocol did. Instead, its successful adoption
was only possible because its pledges are entirely voluntary. And like the
entire UNFCCC process, the Paris Agreement does not tackle the under-
lying causes of the problem: the continued reliance on fossil fuels, the
dominance of technocratic and economic solutions, as well as the mantra
of development and economic growth (Clémençon 2016, 3–11; Watson
et al. 2019, i). Thus, the Paris Agreement represents a mere continuation
of the same rationale that has dominated climate negotiations since the
creation of the UNFCCC in 1992.
In 2019, a panel of climate scientists found “that almost 75 percent
of the climate pledges [made by governments under the Paris Agree-
ment] are partially or totally insufficient to contribute to reducing GHG
[greenhouse gas] emissions by 50 percent by 2030” (Watson et al. 2019,
i), one of the agreement’s principal objectives. The only pledges which
were deemed as sufficient were those of EU member states, tradition-
ally the most ambitious countries worldwide in reducing CO2 emissions
(Watson et al. 2019, 18–19). In other words, those countries that are
already ambitious enough to reduce CO2 emissions do not necessarily
need the Paris Agreement. And other countries cannot be forced by
the Paris Agreement to change their behaviour. Under these conditions,
governments will continue to be an essential part of the global problem
of CO2 emissions.
Between 1992 and 2018, greenhouse gas emissions surged from
22,466 MTCO2 to 36,573 MTCO2 (Global Carbon Project 2019). Of
course, regional differences exist. As the most ambitious bloc in reducing
greenhouse gas emissions, the EU reduced its emissions between 1992
and 2017 from 4.28 to 3.54 billion tonnes. With this modest success,
the EU was the only world region to effectively reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. China alone relentlessly drove greenhouse gas emissions in the
same period from 2.66 to a staggering 9.84 billion tonnes (Ritchie and
Roser 2017).
It seems that we have come to a point when only external events
can change this self-reinforcing dynamic, if only temporarily. After all,
the most dramatic drop in CO2 emissions since the adoption of the
Paris Agreement was triggered by an external event. When in 2020 the
COVID-19 pandemic forced governments across the globe to lockdown
cities, regions and entire countries for several weeks and months, global
CO2 emissions temporarily fell by 18 per cent, and emissions from avia-
tion fell by a staggering 60 per cent compared with 2019 (Le Quéré
et al. 2020). And yet, the temporary impact of COVID-19 has not led
to a radical change in energy patterns and climate politics. At the end
of 2020, the World Meteorological Organisation found that the changes
in CO2 emissions reductions due to the worldwide mobility restrictions
imposed by governments to tackle COVID-19 were comparable to the
usual annual fluctuations in the global carbon cycle, with CO2 emis-
sions continuing at record levels (WMO 2020). This situation was not
changed by the twenty-sixth UNFCCC summit in Glasgow in November
2021. While some modest progress was made in Glasgow, governments’
commitments once again fell short of expectations, and reaching the
1.5°C target is inceasingly out of sight (Masood and Tollefson 2021).
8.2.4 Forest Governance—Too Little, Too Late

Forests are the green giants of our planet, playing an invaluable role in
regulating Earth’s climate. Forests harbour around 80 per cent of the
world’s terrestrial biodiversity, play a crucial role in regulating rainfalls,
and function as gigantic carbon stores (WWF 2020a). Terrestrial vege-
tation worldwide absorbs 30 per cent of anthropogenic CO2 emissions
(Tagesson et al. 2020, 202). Among these green giants, the Amazon
Rainforest is in a class of its own (see also Box 8.3). The largest rain-
forest on the planet, the Amazon harbours 10 per cent of all known
animal and plant species on Earth. The Amazon stores up to 140 billion
metric tonnes of carbon, the release of even a small percentage of
which would have catastrophic consequences, pushing the climate beyond
several tipping points (WWF 2020b). Like all other major forests, the
296 M. FRAUNDORFER
Amazon is besieged on all possible fronts by the impact of livestock, agri-

culture, unsustainable logging, wildfires, mining, infrastructure projects
and hydroelectric power plants (WWF 2015, 5). Anthropogenic land use
and land cover changes, dominated by deforestation, have accounted
for “about one third of the total accumulated anthropogenic carbon
emissions since 1850” (Tagesson et al. 2020, 202).
Box 8.3: The Amazon’s Flying Rivers

The Amazon Rainforest functions like a gigantic water pump. Its trees
generate so much water vapour that large “flying” rivers form in the
skies above the rainforest. These masses of evaporated water in the air are
comparable in size to the masses of water carried by the Amazon River.
Pushed by strong winds, the flying rivers flow west, ever deeper into the
South American continent, before the long mountain range of the Andes
pushes them farther southward and eastward again so that the flying rivers
nurture the entire South American sub-continent through constant rainfall.
The flying rivers provide water for agricultural production all across
South America, feeding the entire population of the sub-continent. Since
Brazil and Argentina belong to the leading exporters of agricultural
commodities, the Amazon’s flying rivers also feed the entire world.
The Amazon’s relentless deforestation and the gradual drying up of
these flying rivers (implying ever more frequent and severe droughts across
South America) spell disaster for Brazil, South America and the entire
world.
Source Rios Voadores (2013).
The protection of the world’s remaining forests plays a fundamental

role in controlling anthropogenic CO2 emissions and regulating the
planet’s climate. Thus, forest protection should be one of the principal
political priorities of our time. While this fundamental role is reflected by
the international political agenda today, the forest governance architecture
remains largely ineffective.
An international angle on forests was first institutionalised in 1892
with the creation of the International Union of Forest Research Organisa-
tions (IUFRO) in Vienna. Still in existence today, IUFRO is the leading
international network of forest experts, promoting international collab-
oration on forest research (Humphreys 2013, 74). In 1945, the newly
established FAO was given a mandate for monitoring international forest
issues (Humphreys 2013, 74). The importance of forests as an essen-

tial element in environmental politics came only gradually to the fore
in the 1970s, particularly embodied by the FAO Forest Committee,
established in 1971, encouraging national forestry services to collaborate
internationally. The 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of Interna-
tional Importance addresses mangrove forests (Haug and Gupta 2012b,
58). The 1975 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
of Wild Fauna and Flora focuses on controlling international trade on
endangered species, among them some species living in forests, such as
gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans (CITES, n.d.; Haug and Gupta
2012b, 58). And the 1975 Convention Concerning the Protection of
the World Cultural and Natural Heritage also includes a forest dimension
(Haug and Gupta 2012b, 58). All these efforts in the 1970s addressed
some aspects of forests, but a more comprehensive and global approach
to forests was still entirely missing.
Only the 1980s witnessed the emergence of the first specific forest
institutions that sought to tackle deforestation and forest degradation.
The deforestation of tropical rainforests since the 1960s in the Congo
Basin, Latin America and South-East Asia had created a global awareness
among governments, NGOs, international organisations and develop-
ment banks that urgent action was needed (Humphreys 2013, 74). In
1980, the WWF, the IUCN and UNEP framed forest degradation as
a global problem (Hale et al. 2013, 239, 245). In 1983, governments
negotiated the International Tropical Timber Agreement, the first and
only legally binding agreement on forests. The agreement established the
International Tropical Timber Organisation in 1986 in Yokohama, Japan,
to regulate the international tropical timber trade between producer and
consumer countries. Rather than focus on forest conservation and protec-
tion, the organisation has tried to address issues like illegal logging,
sustainable forest management and certification schemes (Gulbrandsen
2012, 160; Hale et al. 2013, 240; Haug and Gupta 2012b, 54). Illegal
logging, however, continues to be one of the major factors in the defor-
estation of the world’s remaining tropical forests, which has relentlessly
accelerated since 1986.
The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro catalysed a more focused
approach to forests. In the form of the so-called Forest Principles, a
set of non-binding principles on global forest management and the first
global consensus on forest protection, forests moved to the centre of the
international environmental debate (Hale et al. 2013, 245; Haug and
298 M. FRAUNDORFER
Gupta 2012b, 64). The Forest Principles represented a carefully calibrated

balancing act:
Forestry issues and opportunities should be examined in a holistic and

balanced manner within the overall context of environment and devel-
opment, taking into consideration the multiple functions and uses of
forests, including traditional uses, and the likely economic and social stress
when these uses are constrained or restricted, as well as the potential for
development that sustainable forest management can offer. (WRM–World
Rainforest Movement 1992)
In short, the Forest Principles represent a weak compromise between

the ecological view of forests as an essential element in environmental
protection and the economic view of forests as a resource and commodity
to sustain economic and social development and economic growth
(Gulbrandsen 2012, 154). Forest nations have made extensive use of
their sovereign right to exploit their forests as a natural resource, driving
deforestation and the degradation of natural habitats.
The 1992 Earth Summit also gave rise to the establishment of several
legally binding multilateral environmental agreements that are not directly
focused on forests but do address essential aspects of forest protection.
The 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
acknowledges forests as important carbon sinks (Gulbrandsen 2012, 160).
The 1993 Convention on Biological Diversity developed a programme
on forest biodiversity, whose recommendations, however, are not legally
binding (Gulbrandsen 2012, 157). The 1994 UN Convention to Combat
Desertification acknowledged the importance of forests in preventing
droughts and desertification as well as the crucial role deforestation plays
in advancing desertification (Reischl 2012, 36). The 1997 Kyoto Protocol
considered afforestation (planting new forests in lands devoid of trees
and forests) and reforestation (planting new forests in deforested lands)
as viable measures for Annex-1 countries to meet their emissions targets
(Gulbrandsen 2012, 160).
Throughout the 1990s, governments continued intensified discussions
on the implementation of the Forest Principles through several insti-
tutionalised platforms, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests
(created in 1995), the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (created
in 1997 as the successor organisation to the intergovernmental panel)
and the UN Forum on Forests (established in 2000 as the successor
organisation to the intergovernmental forum) (Gulbrandsen 2012, 155).

Unlike its predecessors, the UN Forum on Forests became a perma-
nent platform with universal membership. The Intergovernmental Panel
on Forests and the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests produced
about 270 proposals on forest protection measures to develop countries’
national forest programmes (Humphreys 2013, 80). Notwithstanding this
activism, international forest negotiations did not make any substantial
progress (Dimitrov 2020).
The creation of the UN Forum on Forests, a toothless organisa-
tion without any decision-making power on forest governance, institu-
tionalised the international lack of consensus and progress on forests
(Dimitrov 2020, 630–633). In many ways, the hollow nature of the UN
Forum on Forests symbolises the fundamental dilemma that has accom-
panied forest negotiations since the early 1990s. Although forests are
global goods due to their invaluable importance to the regulation of the
global climate, global weather patterns and the global water cycle, they are
regarded by governments, particularly forest nations, as precious national
goods to be exploited for economic growth and development.
Hence, governments with extensive forests in their national territories
are strictly against any legally binding commitments or the creation of
an international, or even supranational, organisation to manage forests.
The sovereign right of forest nations to exploit forests as a commodity
has been confirmed in all major forest documents, not least in the 1992
Forest Principles (Haug and Gupta 2012b, 64). As a consequence, the
UN Forum on Forests produced yet another non-legally binding agree-
ment on forests in 2007, which on the one hand reiterates the importance
of forest protection (reversing the worldwide loss of trees, creating more
protected areas and sustainably managed forests, mobilising new finan-
cial resources for forest management and increasing economic, social and
environmental benefits from forest management) but on the other hand
fails to commit governments to any serious action (Dimitrov 2020, 633;
Humphreys 2013, 80).
Since 2005 the UNFCCC climate negotiations have increasingly inte-
grated forests into greenhouse gas emissions targets. The initial idea was
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation by paying devel-
oping countries for forest protection measures (Haug and Gupta 2012a,
80; Humphreys 2013, 81). This idea evolved into what became known
as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degra-
dation). In 2008, UNEP, the UN Development Programme (UNDP)
300 M. FRAUNDORFER
and the FAO created the UN-REDD Programme (United Nations

Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation) to help developing countries tackle deforestation and forest
degradation as a means to reducing CO2 emissions (Humphreys 2013,
81, 85). In 2009, governments established the REDD+ Partnership, with
the plus sign acknowledging the role of poverty as cause and effect of
tropical deforestation and highlighting that reducing deforestation has
both ecological and developmental (poverty-alleviating) benefits (Haug
and Gupta 2012a, 83; Holmgren 2013, 376; Humphreys 2013, 81).
Over the following years, the UN-REDD Programme developed a
multilevel payment system incorporating actors from the local, national
and global levels in multistakeholder approaches (indigenous communi-
ties, NGOs, national ministries, development banks, international organ-
isations, research organisations) to reduce deforestation and contribute
to reforestation and afforestation measures through country-led REDD
programmes (Holmgren 2013, 369). UN-REDD represents the first
comprehensive transnational approach to the protection of the world’s
forests, which is, however, closely tied to a technocratic and state-centric
logic. After more than one decade in existence, increasing evidence has
highlighted that the UN-REDD programme tends to struggle with a
set of problems similar to those in global environmental governance in
general. UN-REDD+ processes are fragmented into a wide array of actors
with different interests and financial capabilities. Their success ultimately
depends on governments’ political will and the context of national policies
in which REDD+ processes unfold. Given the technical and market-
based rationale underlying REDD+ processes, economically strong private
actors frequently benefit at the expense of smallholders, local commu-
nities and indigenous communities. The emphasis on forests’ economic
and developmental benefits tilts these processes in favour of market-based
approaches and a neoliberal rationale that regards forests as valuable assets
and commodities (DeShazo et al. 2016; Pokorny et al. 2013; Tehan et al.
2017).
Forest governance is not only trapped in the Westphalian logic
of national sovereignty, territory and borders. It is also highly frag-
mented, with lots of different actors and institutions (international [finan-
cial] organisations, development banks, UN agencies and programmes,
multilateral environmental agreements, governments of powerful forest
nations, NGOs, companies and philanthropic foundations) competing
for influence and authority. A central and overarching forest mecha-

nism is non-existent. And the only mechanism that might come close
to a central forest mechanism due to its universal membership, the UN
Forum on Forests, is a hollow talk-shop without decision-making power.
These highly fragmented processes in forest governance are pervaded
by a market-driven approach that regards forests as commodities whose
exploitation needs to be controlled and regulated. The ecological value of
forests as crucial elements in regulating the global climate has been subor-
dinated to and incorporated into market ideologies since the beginning
of forest negotiations (Humphreys 2009, 320–321).
These principal characteristics of forest governance render the state-
centric approach to forest protection weak and ineffective. Over the
last thirty years, an estimated 420 million hectares of forest disappeared
worldwide. And yet, the forest governance architecture can be potentially
credited with slowing down the pace of deforestation. Between 1990
and 2000, 16 million hectares of forest had been lost per year. Between
2010 and 2015, the annual deforestation rate was down to 12 million
hectares. And between 2015 and 2020, annual deforestation could be
further slowed down to 10 million hectares (FAO 2020, 4). In the
face of the accelerating global climate crisis, drastically changing weather
patterns and rising temperatures, this modest success is not enough. On
the contrary, even these slowed down deforestation rates are sufficient to
push the climate gradually over the cliff and trigger several climate tipping
points.
8.3 Alternative Transnational

Governance Approaches
In the face of the sobering outcomes of intergovernmental and state-
centric negotiation processes, the following two case studies examine
whether emerging transnational governance approaches have developed
more effective answers to the global climate crisis. Case study 1 looks at
the emerging influence of cities and transnational city networks in CO2
emissions reduction efforts and analyses the role of megacities as envi-
ronmental actors. In this context, case study 1 presents the C40 Cities
Group, the largest transnational network of megacities, and its impact on
the climate policies of the city of Sāo Paulo, one of the leading cities in
302 M. FRAUNDORFER
the network. Case study 2 shifts attention to the transnational mobilisa-

tion efforts of the world’s indigenous peoples and their efforts to reshape
international climate negotiations with their indigenous cosmologies.
8.3.1 Case Study 1: The Climate Action of Transnational City

Networks
In parallel to the increasing frustration and disappointment associated
with the UNFCCC climate negotiations and the outright failure of the
international system to confront the global challenge of greenhouse gas
emissions, a global movement of cities has slowly emerged to position
itself as a more agile, dynamic and cosmopolitan alternative, with the
determination to fill the void left by states’ lack of ambition and political
will.
As critical nodes in the global economy, hotspots of the spread of
infectious diseases, drivers of environmental degradation, major sources
of greenhouse gas emissions and the home of more than half of the
world population, cities are highly vulnerable to the manifold conse-
quences of climate change. Cities as independent political and economic
actors predate the state-centric international system. But the global mobil-
isation of cities through transnational city networks to confront global
environmental challenges is a relatively recent phenomenon dating back
to the early 1990s. One of the most influential city networks is ICLEI—
Local Governments for Sustainability, created in 1990. ICLEI brings
together local governments worldwide in a global network to mitigate
the consequences of climate change in urban spaces. One of ICLEI’s
most successful initiatives is the Cities for Climate Protection campaign,
set up in 1993 to mobilise cities on environmental and climate action
(Fraundorfer 2017).
Since the early 2000s, transnational city networks have proliferated
across the world, creating new momentum in tackling greenhouse gas
emissions and localising the global challenge of climate change (Davidson
et al. 2019, 697; Lee and Koski 2014, 489; Pinault and Hansen 2018,
83: Smeds and Acuto 2018, 550). Mayors’ summits, city conferences and
other transnational forums have mushroomed, and mayors and other city
representatives have frequented international platforms like the UNFCCC
climate summits and the World Economic Forum (Pinault and Hansen
2018, 76–77). Through their activities, cities have gradually carved out
an autonomous political and diplomatic identity in global environmental
governance. For example, when the former climate-change-denying US

President Donald Trump (2017–2021) announced his country’s with-
drawal from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017, a large group of
mayors from major US cities were quick to mobilise against the federal
government, making clear that they would not follow the lead of the US
federal government and instead accelerate ambitious urban climate action
(Smeds and Acuto 2018, 550).
8.3.1.1 Megacities and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group

Among all of the transnational city networks created over the last fifteen
years, the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group brings together the
world’s megacities to collaborate on urban responses to the consequences
megacities face from climate change. The network was born in 2005 on
the initiative of Ken Livingstone, the then-mayor of London, to boost the
role of megacities in climate politics and offer an alternative to states and
state-centric negotiations in tackling climate change (Pinault and Hansen
2018, 81).
The more obvious it became that national leaders stumbled from
one disappointing climate summit to another, the more city mayors
sought to distinguish themselves as pro-active and prolific climate leaders.
C40 mayors organised their own meetings, summits and workshops,
participated in the UNFCCCconferences, carved out their own climate
action agenda, acted as diplomatic actors alongside state representatives,
contributed to shaping transnational law, and painted a picture of mayors
as committed, agile, dynamic and cosmopolitan leaders on climate action
(Davidson et al. 2019, 698–699; Fraundorfer 2017; Pinault and Hansen
2018, 81).
Since its creation in 2005, the C40 Group has emerged as the leading
city network of megacities, providing a platform for coordination and
knowledge exchange among the mayors of some of the most influential
cities in the global economy, such as London, New York City, Tokyo,
Paris, São Paulo, Shanghai, Delhi and others. The network has grown
from 18 to almost 100 megacities, flexing its muscles as a diplomatic
actor and turning into a powerful global force in global environmental
governance, interacting with states, philanthropic foundations, multina-
tional companies, international organisations, civil society and other city
networks (Davidson et al. 2019, 698; Fraundorfer 2017).
As a global movement, the C40 Group has successfully mobilised
megacities around the globe on climate action, committing cities from
304 M. FRAUNDORFER
different world regions to institutionalised city-to-city interaction and the

implementation of a vast number of climate actions. Through these activ-
ities, the C40 Group contributed to an image of megacities as vital global
governance actors (Davidson et al. 2019, 700; Lee and Koski 2014,
489). Member cities’ key advantage lies in the C40 Group’s network
character to establish city-to-city connections and facilitate regular city-
to-city learning and knowledge exchange on urban climate challenges
(Pinault and Hansen 2018, 78–82). Currently, the C40 Group operates
17 thematic sub-networks ranging from challenges of urban flooding and
sea-level rise in delta cities to air quality, food, waste and water manage-
ment, energy efficiency of buildings to transportation and urban planning
(C40 Cities 2020b). Through peer-to-peer exchange, cities learn from
the experiences and strategies of other member cities that struggle with
similar problems, creating a systematic framework of global city standards
in climate action (Pinault and Hansen 2018, 79). For instance, delta cities
in the C40 Connecting Delta Cities sub-network learn from each other’s
experiences in how to adapt to sea-level rise. In similar peer-to-peer inter-
action, cities have increased their green space, introduced low emission
vehicles and buses, improved the energy efficiency of public buildings and
revamped waste and recycling systems (Fraundorfer 2017, 28).
The network is distinct from other major city networks with rather
centralised structures, such as ICLEI, in that cities themselves initiate
climate action (Lee 2019, 105). The C40 Group is essentially a transna-
tional city network that allows member cities to share their best practices,
compare actions and strategies, learn from other cities’ experiences and
gain access to technical assistance (Lee 2019; Pinault and Hansen 2018,
82). Being part of a city network also increases a city’s reputation and
standing among its peers in the global market place, where cities can
distinguish themselves as committed leaders to climate action (Acuto
2013; Pinault and Hansen 2018).
In April 2020, the C40 Group created the Global Mayors COVID-19
Recovery Task Force to facilitate the economic recovery of its members
from the COVID-19 pandemic. Chaired by the mayor of Milan, one of
the worst-hit European cities by the pandemic in 2020, the task force
created a platform for C40 cities to “provide mayors with the best avail-
able data, best practices and analysis for how to achieve an economic
recovery that gets people quickly back to work, puts resources into the
hands of those who need it most, and accelerates action to overcome the
climate crisis” (C40 Cities 2020a). In this context, Singapore shared the
city’s successful experience of COVID-19 mass testing with other C40

cities (C40 Cities 2020a). While it is unclear what exactly such a task force
can ultimately achieve, this announcement stands in the tradition of what
has distinguished transnational city networks over the last twenty years:
the ambition to promote a committed transnational response to major
global environmental challenges in the face of states’ inaction, lacking
leadership and sabotage of future-oriented international collaboration.
Confronted with state governments’ gaping lack of leadership on a
range of global challenges, city mayors have confidently promoted them-
selves as cosmopolitan actors determined to step into the void left by
states. Cities, however, are not fully autonomous and independent polit-
ical units. Many mayors have limited powers, and the fate of many city
governments is closely linked to that of their respective states. Major
global cities like New York and London, which have carved out their
place as global leaders in the C40 Group, have the power to put pressure
on states and act as climate leaders on the global stage (Acuto 2013). The
C40 Group helps cities like London to boost their image and influence.
Other British cities, however, who have severely suffered from austerity
cuts introduced by the national government in the 2010s, have much
less leverage to act as decisive urban leaders on climate change, albeit in
control of those policy areas relevant to climate action: transport, housing
and waste management (Smeds and Acuto 2018, 557).
There are other, more deep-seated, problems with transnational city
networks that question their agency for change in global governance.
The C40 Group represents a highly uneven group of members from
different countries with different political systems and varying degrees of
urban autonomy. Western cities, which are well-connected in the global
economy, have emerged as hubs and drivers of urban climate action. In
contrast, many cities from the developing world remain marginal (Acuto
2013, 853; Bansard et al. 2017; Lee 2019). And whereas transnational
city networks have been impressively forthcoming on climate action in
rhetorical terms, their actual track record on reducing greenhouse gas
emissions has been much less impressive (Heikkinen et al. 2019, 91–92).
Most of the climate actions promoted by transnational city networks,
including those of the C40 Group, are firmly embedded in a market-
driven framework and closely wedded to the principles of economic
growth and development, employing the typical neoliberal terminology
of the green economy, green growth, green mortgages, city emissions
trading, cost savings, efficiency—and other concepts which are closely
306 M. FRAUNDORFER
associated with the global smart city movement (Acuto 2013, 854–
857; Davidson and Gleeson 2015, 26–34; Heikkinen et al. 2019, 95).
As a consequence, the predominant focus of urban climate actions is
technology-based incremental reform, involving multinational companies,
consulting firms and philanthropic foundations to mitigate the conse-
quences of climate change for the sake of urban economic growth
and development (Heikkinen et al. 2019). Most climate actions are
implemented in the areas of energy and transport, increasing energy effi-
ciency and decreasing energy consumption, introducing renewable energy
technologies, expanding walking and cycling infrastructure, developing
carsharing and carpooling initiatives and restricting the use of private cars
(Castán Broto and Bulkeley 2013, 97–98; Trencher et al. 2016). In line
with city networks’ economic and neoliberal mindset, many city networks
lack a mitigation-oriented design, emissions targets and efficient reporting
mechanisms. And most city networks are not necessarily more ambitious
than states when it comes to setting emissions targets (Bansard et al.
2017, 242; Michaelowa and Michaelowa 2017).
8.3.1.2 The Role of the City of Sāo Paulo in the C40 Group
It is questionable, then, whether transnational city networks can effec-
tively reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The city of São Paulo is a case in
point. With 22 million people, São Paulo is the fourth largest megacity
in the world, the largest metropolis in South America and the financial
and economic heart of Brazil (UN 2019, 17). In the 2000s, the city
was also regarded as a role model in how megacities from major devel-
oping countries can confront greenhouse gas emissions with ambitious
and forward-thinking climate action.
Grown from a nondescript little village to a global centre of the inter-
national coffee trade in the nineteenth century, São Paulo has always
articulated an international presence (Mauad and Betsill 2019, 4). Hence,
the city engaged very early with the two most influential city networks,
ICLEI and the C40 Group. The city has participated in ICLEI’s Cities
for Climate Protection campaign since the early 1990s and is a founding
member of the C40 Group, participating in the network since its creation
in 2005 (Di Giulio et al. 2018, 239).
São Paulo’s engagement with ICLEI and the C40 Group heavily influ-
enced the city’s climate action plans and facilitated the adoption of its
Municipal Climate Law in 2009, the first municipal climate law of a major
city in Brazil and Latin America, predating the Brazilian government’s
climate law which was adopted half a year after São Paulo’s climate law
(Mauad and Betsill 2019, 5–6). ICLEI’s involvement was crucial to the
city’s creation of an unprecedented inventory in 2003 to assess its CO2
emissions, the development of a local action plan based on the inven-
tory’s findings and the definition of emissions reduction targets. ICLEI
also played a fundamental role in drafting São Paulo’s Municipal Climate
Law (Setzer et al. 2015, 105–108). Thanks to ICLEI’s influence, São
Paulo could present a highly ambitious and groundbreaking climate law
that inspired other Brazilian cities to follow suit and adopt similar laws.
This new role propelled São Paulo to the status of a global city leader
on urban climate action, as envisioned by the discourse perpetrated by
transnational city networks (Di Giulio et al. 2018, 239; Setzer et al. 2015,
109). Unlike the climate laws of many state governments, including the
Brazilian government, the Municipal Climate Law included a mandatory
emissions target of 30 per cent to be reached by 2012 against the 2003
baseline defined by the city’s first greenhouse gas emissions inventory
(Mauad and Betsill 2019, 6).
The city, however, was unable to deliver on its ambitious promises, and
its agency as an inspiring climate leader soon lost momentum. Instead of
reducing its CO2 emissions, the city’s greenhouse gas emissions slightly
increased between 2003 and 2011 (Mauad and Betsill 2019, 11). The
reasons for the city’s failure are manifold. Climate actions lacked system-
atic planning, enforcement, financial resources and local government
capacity, and were insufficiently integrated with the areas of urban plan-
ning, housing and mobility, which have a crucial impact on CO2 emissions
(Mauad and Betsill 2019, 10–14; Setzer et al. 2015, 112). The city’s key
policymakers also lacked the political will to carry through these actions.
Both among the political elite and the urban society, climate change is
not regarded as a top priority (Di Giulio et al. 2018, 239–240). The
flourishing car market in Brazil poignantly illustrates this lack of environ-
mental consciousness. Driven by the consumerism of Brazil’s emerging
middle class in the 2000s, 3.7 million new cars were added to São Paulo’s
notoriously gridlocked traffic between 2001 and 2012, offsetting CO2
reductions that might have been gained with the city’s climate actions
(Setzer et al. 2015, 112). Most of the climate actions carried out, such
as installing LED lighting, introducing cleaner fuels like biodiesel and
ethanol in the city’s taxi and bus fleet, improving solid waste manage-
ment or expanding green areas, had no impact at all on reducing the city’s
overall CO2 emissions (Di Giulio et al. 2018, 239; Mauad and Betsill
2019, 10).
308 M. FRAUNDORFER
As the sectors of energy and transport produce the largest chunk of São
Paulo’s CO2 emissions, most climate actions focus on the energy sector
(Di Giulio et al. 2018, 239; Setzer et al. 2015, 104). The most successful
climate action, however, was developed in the area of solid waste manage-
ment. The city’s two major landfills were transformed into thermoelectric
power plants to burn the methane generated from decaying waste and
convert it into electricity (C40 Cities 2011). With lots of co-benefits,
such as reducing CO2 emissions, producing cheap renewable energy and
selling carbon credits, this project attracted considerable attention from
the C40 Group and was marketed as an international role model. It was
shared with other cities in the network and implemented in other Latin
American cities (Setzer et al. 2015, 110).
After the city’s failure to deliver on its Municipal Climate Law became
evident in 2012, and accompanied by a change in government, São
Paulo’s role as a major player in urban climate action and a city leader
in the C40 Group lost traction (Mauad and Betsill 2019, 11).
8.3.1.3 The Limitations of Transnational City Networks

As crucial nodes in the global economy, depending on international finan-
cial and trade flows and significantly contributing to the GDP of their
national economies, cities naturally promote a view on climate change
that overlaps with national interests, ignoring the ecological root causes
of many global environmental challenges. Cities actively use terminolo-
gies like the green economy or green growth. They promote techno-fixes
and frame climate change in technocratic and neoliberal terms. The
major strength of transnational city networks lies in their capacity to
create transnational platforms that allow city members to share experi-
ences and learn from each other. These platforms also provide a global
space for mayors to flex their muscles in the diplomatic arena and build
relationships with other actors in global governance, most importantly
representatives of state governments. In this sense, these networks can
mobilise cities in a global movement to develop climate policies and
laws that city governments would not have developed otherwise. These
networks are much less influential in shaping the implementation of urban
climate actions, as these steps depend on national and local dynamics
beyond the control of networks like ICLEI and the C40 Group. The city
of São Paulo, with the successful development of its ambitious Municipal
Climate Law and the subsequent failure of its implementation, vividly

exemplifies this double-edged reality.
Over the past twenty years, transnational city networks have become
a major force in global governance, connecting and mobilising cities of
similar size to tackle the manifold consequences of climate change in
urban settings. Their rise has been facilitated by the ever more evident
impotence of states, intergovernmental organisations and international
negotiations to deal with global environmental challenges. Through their
prolific activities in transnational city networks, cities successfully localised
the global challenge of climate change, developing urban-specific local
climate policies and local climate action and raising awareness among city
dwellers about the local consequences of the abstract challenges of climate
change (Lee and Koski 2014). At the same time, cities and transnational
city networks alone cannot turn the tide on climate action or serve as
alternatives to state governments. While city networks have delivered a
powerful and poignant message of the need for transnational collabora-
tion in the face of global environmental challenges, their impact rarely
reaches beyond learning, knowledge sharing and technical support. And
through their corporatist, technocratic and market-driven approaches,
they even risk exacerbating the Anthropocene’s global environmental
challenges. After all, the unprecedented expansion of urban spaces across
the world over the last few decades features as one of the root causes of
the global climate crisis. This root cause, however, is largely neglected by
transnational city networks.
8.3.2 Case Study 2: The Global Voice of Indigenous Peoples

8.3.2.1 The Centuries-Long Plight of Indigenous Peoples
Indigenous peoples’ understanding of nature and forests is fundamen-
tally different from that of modern societies. While modern societies
principally view forests as a distant resource and commodity to be
exploited for economic growth and development, indigenous communi-
ties regard forests as an essential part of their livelihoods that needs to
be protected. In indigenous cosmologies, humans are intrinsically inter-
woven with the planet’s ecosystems (Fraundorfer 2018; Kopenawa and
Albert 2013). Hence, indigenous communities harbour a deep-seated
and profound understanding of the complexity of the planet’s ecosys-
tems which modern societies have gradually lost and are only now slowly
rediscovering through the multiple consequences of the climate crisis.
310 M. FRAUNDORFER
Given their holistic vision of nature, indigenous communities are

uniquely equipped to play a crucial part in protecting the world’s last
remaining forests. At the same time, indigenous communities belong to
some of the most marginalised actors in environmental and forest gover-
nance. In many countries around the world, indigenous communities
live impoverished and marginalised lives lacking the power and influ-
ence to shape decision-making on forest governance. They suffer from
constant human rights abuses, forced evictions from their lands, extraju-
dicial killings, stigmatisation and government neglect (Pearce 2016, 34;
Tauli-Corpuz et al. 2018, 5–7). Indeed, the genocide (or ethnocide)
of indigenous people that started five centuries ago with the European
colonisation of indigenous peoples’ lands is on-going. As a result, those
communities that are the least responsible for the emergence and accel-
eration of global environmental challenges are those that suffer the most
from the consequences of these challenges, as their livelihoods are utterly
dependent on healthy ecosystems (Powless 2012, 411).
By perpetuating the centuries-long processes of indigenous communi-
ties’ marginalisation, stigmatisation, impoverishment and powerlessness,
the dominant dynamics of global governance have played a significant
role in marginalising and stigmatising humanity’s millennia-old wisdom
of how to protect and maintain the planet’s ecosystems effectively. The
previous sections have vividly shown that the visions and tools of modern
societies (and global governance) have largely failed to tackle the root
causes of today’s global environmental challenges. In the Anthropocene,
all of us depend on the survival of indigenous people and their wisdom
of forest protection.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, one fifth of the total land area
is occupied by indigenous people, approximately 60 per cent of which
is located in the Amazon Basin (FAO and FILAC 2021, 11). And
research has shown that indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon
are as effective in protecting the Amazon as protected areas designated
by the government (Tauli-Corpuz et al. 2018, 7). In the same vein,
forest territories owned by indigenous communities around the world are
considerably less threatened by deforestation than those owned by the
state (Pearce 2016, 16–17). But research has also revealed that indige-
nous peoples “possess ownership rights to just one-fifth of the land that
is rightfully theirs” (Pearce 2016, 8).
8.3.2.2 The Transnational Mobilisation of Indigenous Peoples

Indigenous peoples live in forest areas all across the planet and are
as diverse and fragmented in their religious beliefs, cultural habits and
languages as modern societies. But despite their differences, they share a
common vision of humanity’s intimate relationship with nature, which
fundamentally sets them apart from modern societies (see Box 8.4).
Exposed to existential threats from all sides, over the last few decades
indigenous communities have campaigned to become a transnational
force in a desperate attempt to protect their livelihoods and the land
they depend on. They find unity in their shared history of oppression
and dispossession suffered at the hands of those colonial forces that
laid the foundation of the global governance system and contributed
to the climatic changes indigenous communities are most affected by.
Indigenous communities also find common ground in their shared under-
standing of rights as collective rights vis-à-vis the Western understanding
of rights as individual rights (Powless 2012, 413).
Box 8.4: The Yanomami’s Davi Kopenawa

Davi Kopenawa is a shaman and spokesperson of the Yanomami people in
the Brazilian Amazon. He has campaigned for indigenous rights across the
world for several decades.
Davi Kopenawa: “[T]he white people’s great men think: ‘The forest
lies here without reason, we can therefore mistreat it as much as we want.
It belongs to the government.’ Yet it was not they who planted it and if
we leave it to them, they will only damage it. They will chop down its
tall trees and sell them in the cities. They will burn those that remain and
soil all the rivers. The land will soon be naked and blazing hot. Its value
of growth will leave it forever. Nothing will grow there anymore, and the
game that comes to feed on its fruit will also flee. […] After I grew up, I
often saw the bad marks left by the white people in the forest. They truly
don’t care that its trees are replaced by weeds and its rivers by trickles of
miry water! They probably think that it does not matter, as they will later
cover its floor with the concrete from their cities. We were born in this
forest: we grew up there and we became shamans there. Unlike the white
people, we take care of it, like our elders before us, because without it we
could not live. This is why the spirit of hunger always remained far away
from it.”
Source Kopenawa and Albert (2013, 382–383).
312 M. FRAUNDORFER
In addition to hostile governments, indigenous communities also have

to contend with the hostility and neglect of a state-centric global environ-
mental governance system. This book has amply shown that global gover-
nance and global cooperation efforts primarily depart from a vision of
the world that regards ecosystems as a valuable resource whose exploita-
tion needs to be governed and managed to promote economic growth
and development. Apart from frequent superficial rhetorical nods to the
intrinsic value of ecosystems, environmental governance is largely devoid
of effective practical commitments to the holistic vision of ecosystems as
embodied by indigenous peoples.
The 1992 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
is a case in point. By aiming to protect biological diversity, the conven-
tion prioritises the principles of economic growth and development at
the expense of environmental protection, stating that “economic and
social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding
priorities of developing countries” (UN 1992, 2). Guruswamy notes that
“[i]n the absence of an explicit commitment to protect biodiversity, any
resources transferred under the Convention could be used by a small
minority of zealous developing countries to advance their own concept
of economic and social development” (1999, 80), exacerbating environ-
mental degradation. The CBD also attributes to states “the sovereign
right to exploit their own resources […] and the responsibility to ensure
that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to
the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national
jurisdiction” (UN 1992, 4). After looking back at three decades of the
CBD’s existence, it is abundantly clear that states have made extensive use
of their sovereign right to exploit natural resources. Simultaneously, they
have shunned their responsibilities of developing effective cross-border
cooperation to tackle the global damage caused by their exploitative activ-
ities. The CBD’s weakness is further corroborated by the fact that it has
no global mandate on forest protection, although forests, and particu-
larly tropical rainforests, are the planet’s major hotspots of biodiversity
(Guruswamy 1999, 80).
The 2020 Global Biodiversity Outlook on the state of the plan-
et’s biodiversity further emphasised the CBD’s toothlessness. In 2011,
the CBD agreed on a comprehensive set of 20 ambitious biodiversity
targets to be reached by 2020. These so-called Aichi targets represent
an ambitious blueprint of what is required to protect and safeguard
the planet’s biodiversity. They include actions such as preventing the
extinction of threatened species, maintaining the genetic diversity of culti-

vated plants, respecting traditional indigenous knowledge and practices
for the conservation of biodiversity, involving indigenous communities in
decision-making at all relevant governance levels, halving the rate of loss
of natural habitats, implementing measures to avoid overfishing and so
forth. While the report noted some progress in achieving these targets,
none of the targets were reached. And the report emphasised that the
progress achieved is far too low to avoid the continuing decline of biodi-
versity across the planet (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological
Diversity 2020).
As discussed previously, all major mechanisms in forest governance
developed since the early 1990s, most importantly the Forest Principles,
echo the very same logic of prioritising economic and social development,
regarding forests as a resource and paying lip service to the intrinsic value
of forests. Indigenous peoples’ cosmologies are diametrically opposed to
this view. Hence, indigenous communities have mobilised to rescue their
wisdom and knowledge in transnational cooperation efforts.
The 1980s and 1990s witnessed indigenous communities’ first efforts
to carve out an international identity in relation to global environmental
challenges. As a transnational platform, the Coordinating Body of Indige-
nous Organisations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) played an important
role in uniting several indigenous federations from the Amazon Basin
and establishing connections with NGOs and other non-state actors in
environmental governance (Pieck 2006, 317). Since the early 2000s,
indigenous communities have gained a voice in the UN system. In 2000,
the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was created
as a high-level advisory body to the UN Economic and Social Council.
One year later, the UN established the position of the Special Rapporteur
on the rights of indigenous peoples to monitor the human rights situation
of indigenous peoples across the world. Indigenous peoples’ mobilisation
efforts finally culminated in the adoption of the UN Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007, which officially recog-
nised for the first time the rights of indigenous peoples and created a
framework of minimum rights-standards for indigenous peoples world-
wide (Powless 2012, 415; UN 2007). The UN Human Rights Council
established the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to
promote the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN,
n.d.).
314 M. FRAUNDORFER
With these major achievements, indigenous peoples have carved out a

global identity as natural guardians and stewards of the environment and
scaled up their long struggles for recognition, self-determination and land
rights (Claeys and Delgado Pugley 2017; Doolittle 2010; Whyte 2016).
Indigenous peoples have been involved in the UNFCCC process since
1998 before their engagement was institutionalised in 2008 through the
International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC),
a transnational forum for indigenous communities to engage with the
UNFCCC process and shape the international climate negotiations in line
with indigenous cosmologies (Claeys and Delgado Pugley 2017, 327).
Through this platform, indigenous communities have repeatedly
expressed their disproval of the international climate negotiations, arguing
that their inherent logic contributes to indigenous communities’ ongoing
marginalisation (Doolittle 2010, 288–289; Whyte 2016). This disproval
also extended to the UN REDD+ process, which many state and non-
state actors hailed as a crucial step forward in forest protection because of
the inclusion of indigenous communities in its multistakeholder approach.
The IIPFCC, however, condemned the new mechanism as yet another
tool to perpetuate human rights violations and land expropriations due
to the strong involvement of states and the private sector, as well as
the dominance of the same market-driven ideology that has pervaded
the UNFCCC climate negotiations since their beginning (Claeys and
Delgado Pugley 2017, 328; Doolittle 2010, 289).
Mounting research corroborates the IIPFCC’s point of view that
REDD+ initiatives risk perpetuating the marginalisation of indigenous
communities in forest protection efforts in virtue of the same market-
driven ideology that has guided environmental governance more broadly
(Müller 2020; Myers et al. 2018; Schroeder 2010; Shankland and
Hasenclever 2011). The IIPFCC is no less critical of the Paris Climate
Agreement, which many state and non-state actors praised as a break-
through in environmental governance. Apart from governments’ mere
rhetorical nod to indigenous peoples’ rights in the preamble, the IIPFCC
was disappointed to see that the Paris Climate Agreement did not include
one single meaningful reference to indigenous peoples’ rights in the
agreement’s operative section (IIPFCC 2015).
8.3.2.3 Achievements and Limitations

Indigenous communities have made their mark in global environ-
mental governance through extensive transnational mobilisation efforts
to embody a global conscience of humanity’s last surviving remnants of

millennia-old cultures, which have suffered from the constant risk of anni-
hilation for the last five hundred years at the hands of those very forces
that have principally contributed to the emergence of today’s global envi-
ronmental challenges. Indigenous activists have demanded much more
ambitious CO2 emissions reductions than governments (or cities). They
have articulated an entirely different vision of humanity’s relationship with
the planet. And they have sharply criticised the dominant technocratic and
market-driven discourse pervading global (environmental) governance. As
one of very few actors in global governance, indigenous communities
have constantly revealed the root causes of the global climate crisis as
a complex set of interconnected factors involving a predatory capitalist
system reliant on resource extraction and fossil fuels, colonial processes
of dominance and oppression, the consequences of large-scale industrial-
isation and a blind belief in technology-based solutions (Powless 2012,
419).
Since 2007, indigenous communities have campaigned for the recog-
nition and implementation of the principles of the UN Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), particularly in the context
of the UNFCCC climate negotiations. A case in point is the principle of
free, prior and informed consent (the right of indigenous communities
to be involved in, and consent to, any development plans on indige-
nous communities’ lands) (Claeys and Delgado Pugley 2017, 333). While
transnational platforms like the IIPFCC have allowed indigenous commu-
nities to speak with a single voice (Claeys and Delgado Pugley 2017,
327), their efforts at implementing UNDRIP’s rights framework have
been much less successful. And their role in reshaping the underlying
rationale of the UNFCCC climate negotiations remains marginal.
And yet, indigenous peoples have emerged as a global and united
voice holding up a mirror to the dominant actors in global environmental
governance and the UNFCCC climate negotiations (Claeys and Delgado
Pugley 2017, 335; Powless 2012; Whyte 2016). The fact that indige-
nous rights, as stipulated by UNDRIP, were not meaningfully addressed
by the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement only corroborates the shortcom-
ings of the UNFCCC process to tackle the climate crisis. Simultaneously,
the continued lack of substantial engagement with indigenous rights and
indigenous cosmologies in the international climate negotiations attests
to the reluctance of global governance actors to engage with the root
causes of today’s global environmental challenges.
316 M. FRAUNDORFER
At the same time, indigenous activists are not giving up. Hindou
Oumarou Ibrahim, an environmental activist from the Mbororo
pastoralist community in Chad and a leading member of the IIPFCC and
other transnational indigenous platforms, expressed her belief in the fight
of indigenous peoples in the following words:
At the international level, indigenous peoples represent around 400 million

people. But they manage more than 10 percent of the land and 80 percent
of the world’s biodiversity. This may be a small population compared
to all the billions of people in the world, but we are the ones who are
maintaining the bigger part of our ecosystems.
I’m concerned about them and that’s why I have dedicated my life to
defend these indigenous peoples. To make their voices heard. And to try
to protect them. Because if we protect just these 400 hundred million -
who protect 80 percent of the biodiversity - I think we can protect our
planet. (Africa Portal 2020)
8.4 Summary
In the last thirty years, a complex, multilayered and multi-actor environ-
mental governance architecture has emerged to tackle the global chal-
lenges of ozone depletion, rising greenhouse gases, deforestation, biodi-
versity loss, species extinction and many other aspects of environmental
degradation. Greenhouse gas emissions reductions and environmental
degradation have become a key priority on the global agenda, pervading
the actions and discourses of governments, international organisations
and transnational actors.
But this complex architecture is tightly wedded to the Westphalian
logic. Although climate change is the fundamental challenge of our time,
the global environmental governance architecture lacks an overarching
global authority to coordinate the global climate response. UNEP as the
alleged central authority is an organisation without a global mandate,
lacking the power to act as a global authority, as is the case with the World
Health Organisation in global health, the International Labour Organi-
sation on labour issues or the Food and Agriculture Organisation in the
global food system. While these international organisations are rife with
problems, besieged by grave limitations, they have been able to act as

global authorities in their respective policy-arenas. This gaping void has
led to a highly fragmented environmental governance sector, characterised
by a multitude of actors with diverging interests, competing organisations
with overlapping mandates, duplications of efforts and weak and ineffec-
tive outcomes. Instead of creating a World Environment Organisation,
UN member states opted for a weak reform of UNEP, which did not
fundamentally change UNEP’s role.
Global environmental governance continues to be profoundly shaped
by national interests, as CO2 emissions reduction targets are closely linked
to fossil-fuelled energy patterns (see Chapter 7) and the principles of
economic growth and development. In the same vein, forests are primarily
regarded as national goods and commodities to be exploited (and defor-
ested) for the sake of economic growth and development. Instead of
cultivating global and planetary perspectives, global environmental gover-
nance is profoundly shaped by the principles of national sovereignty,
national territory and national borders: principles which over the last
three decades have played an undeniable role in exacerbating the global
environmental challenges of the Anthropocene.
8.4.2 The Dominance of Market-Driven and Technocratic

Approaches
The dominance of market-driven approaches compounded by a blind
belief in technology-based solutions is intrinsically connected to this state-
centric logic, reinforcing the idea that entire ecosystems can be exploited,
sold, traded and commoditised to benefit states’ economic growth and
development maxims.
One of the few success stories of the global environmental governance
architecture was the Montreal Protocol to phase-out the production
and use of ozone-depleting substances. This success story followed all
the characteristics that mark the failure of global governance in halting
deforestation, environmental degradation and greenhouse gas emissions.
The Montreal Protocol was state-centric, embraced a market-driven logic
and employed a technocratic approach. In the same vein, ecological
concerns were trumped by financial and economic interests. The inter-
national negotiations were on the verge of collapse because of this
economic rationale and diverging economic interests between the US and
European states. And yet, the final adoption of the Montreal Protocol
318 M. FRAUNDORFER
became a resounding success. This means that state-centric and market-

driven approaches can work under very specific circumstances. In the
case of ozone-depleting substances, this approach worked because states’
economic growth and development did not depend on the produc-
tion and emission of ozone-depleting substances. On the contrary, these
substances were produced by a small group of countries and a small
industry that was already actively looking for economically more viable
alternatives when the negotiations were taking place.
Greenhouse gas emissions, not least through deforestation, go to the
very heart of national interests. The dominant ideational and material
structures of the global governance system historically rely on green-
house gas emissions. The debate on CO2 emissions also touches on
fundamental ideological convictions by which human societies have been
guided for centuries, if not millennia: economic growth and develop-
ment. The global energy patterns of our globalised civilisation depend
on greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation. That’s why
governments have been extremely reluctant to commit to a radical rethink
of climate change policies. And that’s why state-centric, market-driven
and technocratic approaches have proved largely ineffective in tackling
global environmental challenges like deforestation and greenhouse gas
emissions.
Some alternative transnational actors, such as cities and transnational
city networks, reproduce a similar logic. As crucial nodes in global
economic and financial flows and major centres of economic production
and growth, cities are primarily interested in maintaining and increasing
economic growth. Hence, it is not surprising that transnational city
networks, like the global smart city movement (see Chapter 7), have
almost exclusively promoted market-driven, technocratic and technology-
based solutions to tackle climate change. Through these activities, cities
and transnational city networks, like ICLEI and the C40 Cities Group,
risk exacerbating today’s global environmental challenges.
8.4.3 The Marginalisation of Ecological Approaches

Despite the prolific activism of states, international organisations and
cities, the consequences of climate change are felt more than ever before.
The loss of biodiversity across the globe has accelerated, deforestation
continues at unacceptably high rates, and tonnes of greenhouse gas emis-
sions continue to drive global warming. The parameters of economic
growth and development are among the the root causes of the global
climate crisis. And those actors in global governance that exclusively act
upon these parameters risk aggravating this crisis.
Those communities that reject these parameters act on the fringes of
the dominant processes of global governance. In the last three decades,
indigenous communities have formed a global voice that is appealing
to the conscience of dominant actors in global governance. But this
voice is often ignored or not taken seriously. This global voice is as
much under siege as the planet’s ecosystems and last remaining tropical
rainforests. Indigenous communities are profoundly aware of the inter-
connectedness of the planet’s ecosystems and recognise that humans can
only survive in healthy and intact ecosystems. Whereas major documents,
treaties and summits in global environmental governance have repeatedly
paid tribute to the intrinsic ecological value of ecosystems, not least the
twenty-sixth UNFCCC climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, the commit-
ment of many dominant global governance actors has remained purely
discursive. Indigenous peoples’ failure to reshape global environmental
governance is one of the most poignant expressions of the inadequacy of
global governance in the Anthropocene.
Questions
• Discuss UNEP’s legitimacy crisis in global environmental gover-

nance! To what extent has UNEP’s authority and legitimacy as a
central environmental organisation suffered?
• Explain the dilemma of global forest governance! Why is it so
difficult to protect the planet’s vanishing forests?
• Explain why and how cities have emerged as major diplomatic and
political players in global environmental governance!
• Discuss to what extent cities have been successful in addressing
global climate change and how, at the same time, their climate
actions are compounding the climate crisis!
• Discuss the tragic entanglements between the architecture of global
environmental governance and the global environmental challenges
of the Anthropocene! To what extent are the terms Capitalocene
and Technocene useful to explain the shortcomings of global envi-
ronmental governance?
320 M. FRAUNDORFER
References
Acuto, M. 2013. The New Climate Leaders? Review of International Studies 39
(4): 835–857.
Africa Portal. 2020. A Voice for Indigenous Communities Affected by Climate
Change: Interview with Hindou Ibrahim, May 13 [online]. Available
from: https://www.africaportal.org/features/voice-indigenous-communities-
affected-climate-change-interview-hindou-ibrahim/. Accessed 7 June 2021.
Agrawala, S. 1998. Context and Early Origins of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change. Climatic Change 39: 605–620.
Andresen, S., and E.L. Boasson. 2012. International Climate Cooperation.
Clear Recommendations, Weak Commitments. In International Environ-
mental Agreements: An Introduction, ed. S. Andresen, E.L. Boasson, and G.
Honneland. Abingdon: Routledge.
Andresen, S., E.L. Boassson, and G. Honneland. 2012. An International
Environmental Policy Takes Shape. In International Environmental Agree-
ments: An Introduction, ed. S. Andresen, E.L. Boasson, and G. Honneland.
Andersen, S.O., M.L. Halberstadt, and N. Borgford-Parnell. 2013. Stratospheric
Ozone, Global Warming and the Principle of Unintended Consequences—
An Ongoing Science and Policy Success Story. Journal of the Air & Waste
Management Association 63 (6): 607–647.
Bansard, J., P. Pattberg, and O. Widerberg. 2017. Cities to the Rescue?
Assessing the Performance of Transnational Municipal Networks in Global
Climate Governance. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law
and Economics 17: 229–246.
Biermann, F. 2000. The Case for a World Environment Organization. Environ-
ment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 42 (9): 22–31.
C40 Cities. 2011. Case Study: Sao Joao and Bandeirantes Landfills [Online].
Available from: https://www.c40.org/case_studies/sao-joao-and-bandeiran
tes-landfills. Accessed 8 July 2020.
C40 Cities. 2020a. Global Mayors Launch COVID-19 Economic Recovery
Task Force, April 15 [Online]. Available from: https://www.c40.org/press_
releases/global-mayors-covid-19-recovery-task-force. Accessed 8 July 2020.
C40 Cities. 2020b. Networks [Online]. Available from: https://www.c40.org/
networks. Accessed 8 July 2020.
Castán Broto, V., and H. Bulkeley. 2013. A Survey of Urban Climate Change
Experiments in 100 Cities. Global Environmental Change 23 (1): 92–102.
CITES. n.d. Appendices [Online]. Available from: https://www.cites.org/eng/
app/appendices.php. Accessed 8 July 2020.
Claeys, P., and D. Delgado Pugley. 2017. Peasant and Indigenous Transna-
tional Social Movements Engaging with Climate Justice. Canadian Journal
of Development Studies / Revue Canadienne D’études Du Développement 38

(3): 325–340.
Clémençon, R. 2016. The Two Sides of the Paris Climate Agreement: Dismal
Failure or Historic Breakthrough? The Journal of Environment & Development
25 (1): 3–24.
Davidson, K., and B. Gleeson. 2015. Interrogating Urban Climate Leadership:
Toward a Political Ecology of the C40 Network. Global Environmental Politics
15 (4): 21–38.
Davidson, K., L. Coenen, and B. Gleeson. 2019. A Decade of C40: Research
Insights and Agendas for City Networks. Global Policy 10 (4): 697–708.
Depledge, J. 2015. The Global Climate Change Regime. In Global Energy: Issues,
Potential and Policy Implications, ed. P. Ekins, M. Bradshaw, and J. Watson.
DeShazo, J.L., C.L. Pandey, and Z.A. Smith. 2016. Why REDD Will Fail.
Di Giulio, G.M., A.M.B. Bedran-Martins, M.D.P. Vasconcellos, W.C. Ribeiro,
and M.C. Lemos. 2018. Mainstreaming Climate Adaptation in the Megacity
of São Paulo, Brazil. Cities 72 (Part B): 237–244.
Dimitrov, R.S. 2020. Empty Institutions in Global Environmental Politics.
International Studies Review 22 (3): 626–650.
Doolittle, A. 2010. The Politics of Indigeneity: Indigenous Strategies for
Inclusion in Climate Change Negotiations. Conservation and Society 8 (4):
286–291.
Evans, A., and T. Smith. 2015. Shipping and Aviation. In Global Energy: Issues,
Potenial and Policy Implications, ed. P. Ekins, M. Bradshaw, and J. Watson.
FAO. 2020. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020: Key Findings. Rome: FAO.
FAO and FILAC. 2021. Forest Governance by Indigenous and Tribal Peoples:
An Opportunity for Climate Action in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Santiago: FAO.
Fraundorfer, M. 2017. The Role of Cities in Shaping Transnational Law in
Climate Governance. Global Policy 8 (1): 23–31.
Fraundorfer, M. 2018. The Rediscovery of Indigenous Thought in the Modern
Global Carbon Project. 2019. Global Carbon Atlas [Online]. Available
from: http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org/en/CO2-emissions. Accessed 8 July
2020.
Gulbrandsen, L.H. 2012. International Forest Politics. Intergovernmental
Failure, Non-governmental Success? In International Environmental Agree-
ments: An Introduction, ed. S. Andresen, E.L. Boasson, and G. Honneland.
322 M. FRAUNDORFER
Guruswamy, L.D. 1999. The Convention on Biological Diversity: Exposing the

Flawed Foundations. Environmental Conservation 26 (2): 79–82.
Hale, T. 2020. Transnational Actors and Transnational Governance in Global
Environmental Politics. Annual Review of Political Science 23: 203–220.
Hale, T., D. Held, and K. Young. 2013. Gridlock: Why Global Cooperation Is
Failing When We Need It Most. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Haug, C., and J. Gupta. 2012a. The Emergence of REDD on the Global Policy
Agenda. In Climate Change, Forests and REDD: Lessons for Institutional
Design. Abingdon: Routledge.
Haug, C., and J. Gupta. 2012b. Global Forest Governance. In Climate Change,
Forests and REDD: Lessons for Institutional Design, ed. J. Gupta, N. Vand der
Grijp, and O. Kuik. Abingdon: Routledge.
Heikkinen, M., T. Ylä-Anttila, and S. Juhola. 2019. Incremental, Reformistic or
Transformational: What Kind of Change Do C40 Cities Advocate to Deal
with Climate Change? Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 21 (4):
90–103.
Holmgren, S. 2013. REDD+ in the Making: Orders of Knowledge in the
Climate–Deforestation Nexus. Environmental Science & Policy 33: 369–377.
Humphreys, D. 2009. Discourse as Ideology: Neoliberalism and the Limits of
International Forest Policy. Forest Policy and Economics 11 (5–6): 319–325.
Humphreys, D. 2013. Deforestation. In The Handbook of Global Climate and
Environment Policym, ed. R. Falkner. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
ICAO. n.d. What Is CORSIA and How Does It Work? [Online]. Available
from: https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Pages/A39_COR
SIA_FAQ2.aspx. Accessed 8 July 2020.
IIPFCC. 2015. IIPFCC Statement at Closing Plenary of UNFCCC COP21,
Paris, 12 December, 2015 [Online]. Available from: https://static1.squ
arespace.com/static/5627862ce4b07be93cfb9461/t/577fbe7fe6f2e15dc1
74d54f/1467989631569/International+Indigenous+Peoples+Forum+on+Cli
mate+Change+Closing+Statement.pdf. Accessed 8 July 2020.
IUCN. 2004. An Introduction to the African Convention on the Conservation
of Nature and Natural Re-sources. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK:
IUCN.
IUCN. 2020. IUCN—A Brief History [Online]. Available from: https://www.
iucn.org/about/iucn-a-brief-history. Accessed 8 July 2020.
Ivanova, M. 2012. Institutional Design and UNEP Reform: Historical Insights
on Form, Function and Financing. International Affairs 88 (3): 565–584.
Ivanonva, M. 2016. An Engaged Scholarship Narrative. In New Earth Politics:
Essays from the Anthropocene, ed. S. Nicholson and S. Jinnah. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Kopenawa, D., and B. Albert. 2013. The Falling Sky. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Le Quéré, C., R.B. Jackson, M.W. Jones, A.J.P. Smith, S. Abernethy, R.M.
Andrew, A.J. De-Gol, D.R. Willis, Y. Shan, J.G. Canadell, P. Friedlingstein,
F. Creutzig, and G.P. Peters. 2020. Temporary Reduction in Daily Global
CO2 Emissions During the COVID-19 Forced Confinement. Nature Climate
Change 10: 647–653.
Lee, T. 2019. Network Comparison of Socialization, Learning and Collaboration
in the C40 Cities Climate Group. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning
21 (1): 104–115.
Lee, T., and C. Koski. 2014. Mitigating Global Warming in Global Cities:
Comparing Participation and Climate Change Policies of C40 Cities. Journal
of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 16 (5): 475–492.
Mauad, A., and M. Betsill. 2019. A Changing Role in Global Climate Gover-
nance: São Paulo Mixing Its Climate and International Policies. Revista
Brasileira de Politíca Internacional 62 (2): 1–17.
Masood, E., and J. Tollefson. 2021. ‘COP26 hasn’t Solved the Problem’:
Scientists React to UN Climate Deal. Nature 599 (7885): 355–356.
Michaelowa, K., and A. Michaelowa. 2017. Transnational Climate Governance
Initiatives: Designed for Effective Climate Change Mitigation? International
Interactions 43 (1): 129–155.
Müller, F. 2020. Can the Subaltern Protect Forests? REDD+ Compliance,
Depoliticization and Indigenous Subjectivities. Journal of Political Ecology 27
(1): 419–435.
Myers, R., A.M. Larson, A. Ravikumar, L.F. Kowler, A. Yang, and T. Trench.
2018. Messiness of Forest Governance: How Technical Approaches Suppress
Politics in REDD+ and Conservation Projects. Global Environmental Change
50: 314–324.
Nobelprize.org. 2020. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1995 [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1995/summary/.
Pearce, F. 2016. Common Ground: Securing Land Rights and Safeguarding the
Earth. Oxford: Oxfam International.
Pieck, S.K. 2006. Opportunities for Transnational Indigenous Eco-Politics: The
Changing Landscape in the New Millennium. Global Networks 6 (3): 309–
329.
Pinault, E., and S. Hansen. 2018. Mayors on the Global Stage—A Political Star
Is Born. Økonomi & Politik 91 (3): 75–84.
Pokorny, B., I. Scholz, and W. De Jong. 2013. REDD+ for the Poor or the
Poor for REDD+? About the Limitations of Environmental Policies in the
Amazon and the Potential of Achieving Environmental Goals Through Pro-
poor Policies. Ecology and Society 18 (3): 1–15.
Powless, B. 2012. An Indigenous Movement to Confront Climate Change.
Globalizations 9 (3): 411–424.
324 M. FRAUNDORFER
Reischl, G. 2012. Designing Institutions for Governing Planetary Boundaries—

Lessons from Global Forest Governance. Ecological Economics 81: 33–40.
Rios Voadores. 2013. Website. Available from: https://riosvoadores.com.br/.
Accessed 22 Mar 2021.
Ritchie, H., and M. Roser. 2017. CO2 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions [Online].
Available from: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-
emissions. Accessed 8 July 2020.
Saunier, R.E., and R.A. Meganck. 2007. Dictionary and Introduction to Global
Environmental Governance. London: Earthscan.
Schroeder, H. 2010. Agency in International Climate Negotiations: The Case of
Indigenous Peoples and Avoided Deforestation. International Environmental
Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 10: 317–332.
Science Museum. 2019. Something in the Air: James Lovelock and Atmospheric
Pollution. Available from: https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-
stories/chemistry/something-air-james-lovelock-and-atmospheric-pollution.
Accesssed 22 Mar 2021.
Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. 2020. Global Biodiver-
sity Outlook 5. Available from: https://www.cbd.int/gbo/gbo5/publication/
gbo-5-en.pdf. Accessed 22 Mar 2021.
Setzer, J., L. Valente de Macedo, and F. Rei. 2015. Combining Local and
Transnational Action in the Adoption and Implementation of Climate Poli-
cies in the City of São Paulo. In The Urban Climate Change: Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime, ed. C. Johnson, N. Toly, and H.
Schroeder. New York: Routledge.
Shankland, A., and L. Hasenclever. 2011. Indigenous Peoples and the Regulation
of REDD+ in Brazil: Beyond the War of the Worlds? IDS Bulletin 42 (3):
80–88.
Skjærseth, J.B. 2012. International Ozone Policies: Effective Environmental
Cooperation. In International Environmental Agreements: An Introduction,
ed. S. Andresen, E.L. Boasson, and G. Honneland. Abingdon: Routledge.
Smeds, E., and M. Acuto. 2018. Networking Cities After Paris: Weighing the
Ambition of Urban Climate Change Experimentation. Global Policy 9 (4):
549–559.
Stevenson, H. 2021. Reforming Global Climate Governance in an Age of
Bullshit. Globalizations 18 (1): 86–102.
Tagesson, T., G. Schurgers, S. Horion, P. Ciais, F. Tian, M. Brandt, A. Ahlström,
J.-P. Wigneron, J. Ardö, S. Olin, L. Fan, Z. Wu, and R. Fensholt. 2020.
Recent Divergence in the Contributions of Tropical and Boreal Forests to the
Terrestrial Carbon Sink. Nature Ecology & Evolution 4: 202–209.
Tauli-Corpuz, V., J. Alcorn, and A. Molnar. 2018. Cornered by Protected Areas:

Replacing ‘Fortress’ Conservation with Rights-Based Approaches Helps Bring
Justice for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, Reduces Conflict, and
Enables Cost-Effective Conservation and Climate Action. Washington, DC:
Rights and Resources Initiative.
Tehan, M.F., L.C. Godden, M.A. Young, and K.A. Gover. 2017. The Impact
of Climate Change Mitigation on Indigenous and Forest Communities: Inter-
national, National and Local Law Perspectives on REDD+. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Trencher, G., V. Castán Broto, T. Takagi, Z. Sprigings, Y. Nishida, and M.
Yarime. 2016. Innovative Policy Practices to Advance Building Energy Effi-
ciency and Retrofitting: Approaches, Impacts and Challenges in Ten C40
Cities. Environmental Science and Policy 66: 353–365.
UN. 1992. Convention on Biological Diversity [Online]. Available from: https://
www.cbd.int/doc/legal/cbd-en.pdf. Accessed 8 July 2020.
UN. 2007. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
[Online]. Available from: https://www.un.org/development/desa/indige
nouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.
pdf. Accessed 8 July 2020.
UN. 2019. World Urbanization Prospects 2018. New York: UN.
UN. n.d. Permanent Forum [Online]. Available from: https://www.un.org/dev
elopment/desa/indigenouspeoples/unpfii-sessions-2.html. Accessed 2020.
UNEP. n.d. About the United Nations Environment Assembly [Online]. Avail-
able from: https://environmentassembly.unenvironment.org/about-united-
nations-environment-assembly. Accessed 8 July 2020.
Watson, R., H. Mccarthy, P. Canziani, N. Nakicenovic, and L. Hisas. 2019. The
Truth Behind the Climate Pledges. Washington, DC: FEU-US.
Whyte, K.P. 2016. Indigenous Environmental Movements and the Function of
Government Institutions. In The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political
Theory, ed. T. Gabrielson, C. Hall, J.M. Meyer, and D. Schlosberg. Oxford:
WMO. 2020. Carbon Dioxide Levels Continue at Record Levels, Despite
COVID-19 Lockdown [Online]. Available from: https://public.wmo.int/
en/media/press-release/carbon-dioxide-levels-continue-record-levels-despite-
covid-19-lockdown. Accessed 26 Nov 2020.
WRM–World Rainforest Movement. 1992. Forest Principles—Report of the
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development [Online].
Available from: https://wrm.org.uy/other-relevant-information/forest-pri
nciples-report-of-the-united-nations-conference-on-environment-and-develo
pment/. Accessed 8 July 2020.
326 M. FRAUNDORFER
WWF. 2015. WWF Living Forests Report: Chapter 5. Saving Forests at Risk.
Gland, Switzerland: WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature.
WWF. 2020a. Forest Habitat [Online]. Available from: https://www.worldwild
life.org/habitats/forest-habitat. Accessed 8 July 2020.
WWF. 2020b. Inside the Amazon [Online]. Available from: https://wwf.
panda.org/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/amazon/about_the_amazon/.
CHAPTER 9
Conclusion
As hyperobjects, the global challenges of the Anthropocene are so “mas-

sively distributed in time and space” (Morton 2014, 489) that we are
inevitably bound up with them through our actions in the past, present
and the future. Neither can we escape them geographically, as they
encompass the entire planet, nor can we escape them temporally, as they
will become ever more pressing in the future. Fossil fuels are compressed
versions of millions of years of past life on planet Earth. By releasing
the compressed history of planet Earth into the atmosphere, the last
two hundred years have accelerated this compression of time and space,
creating a highly globalised, interdependent and fossil fuel-intensive civili-
sation, whose impact on the Earth-system is so profound that the planet’s
climate is transforming as radically as never before in the history of
humanity. The hyperobjects discussed in this book (infectious diseases,
food production, freshwater, energy production and climate change) are
intrinsically intertwined in their causes and consequences, thus exacer-
bating their impact on the Earth-system. The temporal implications of
these hyperobjects reach far back into the past and extend far into the
future, profoundly reshaping the present and carving out the contours
of a new age which are still merged with the past. The contours of this
new geological age, the Anthropocene, will confront us with challenges
no human generation has ever confronted before.

Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88156-6_9
328 M. FRAUNDORFER
Since the nineteenth century, international coordination mechanisms

in the form of intergovernmental conferences and intergovernmental
organisations have emerged to coordinate action and decision-making
among national governments on challenges that go far beyond the
authority of one state government or even a group of state govern-
ments. Simultaneously, cities, NGOs, philanthropic foundations and social
movements have built transnational governance structures to address
transnational challenges. Out of these manifold efforts at international
and transnational cooperation and decision-making, which accelerated
after the Second World War and received another push after the end
of the Cold War, emerged a complex and multilayered architecture that
was conceptualised by some scholars as global governance in 1992. The
dominant global governance dynamics that evolved over the past thirty
years, and whose roots can be traced back to the nineteenth century, have
had a paradoxical effect. Instead of effectively tackling global environ-
mental challenges, they have contributed to exacerbating environmental
degradation, natural habitat loss, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions,
freshwater pollution and infectious disease outbreaks. In other words, the
dominant dynamics of global governance that have slowly emerged over
the last two hundred years are deeply entangled with the worsening global
climate crisis.
9.1 The Tragic Entanglements Between

Global Governance and the Anthropocene
This book has teased out several structural patterns that complicate
effective, sustainable and long-term global decision-making on these
challenges. First of all, the global governance architecture is highly frag-
mented with weak international and transnational authorities. Second, this
fragmented global governance architecture is built on a state-centric and
neo-colonial order, revealing vast political and socio-economic inequalities
between and within states. At the same time, the dominance of notions
such as national interest, national sovereignty and national territory often
seriously hamper effective decision-making on transnational and global
challenges. Third, this fragmented, state-centric and neo-colonial global
governance system is underpinned by capitalist structures that have made
9 CONCLUSION 329
the commodification of nature the principal economic goal driving domi-

nant global governance dynamics since the nineteenth century. These
three patterns are interlinked and constitute a vicious circle of global
governance reinforcing political and socio-economic structures that have
seriously exacerbated today’s global environmental challenges.
9.1.1 A Fragmented Global Architecture and Weak International

and Transnational Authorities
We fundamentally lack the global architecture needed to confront global
challenges. Actions which in the past had mostly local or regional conse-
quences now have serious global repercussions, affecting all world regions,
continents and states to different degrees. The COVID-19 infectious
disease outbreak started in late December 2019 in a Chinese city as a
Chinese problem. But within a matter of weeks and months, the outbreak
grew into a global problem, seriously affecting all countries worldwide.
When we buy our groceries in the local supermarket, we become bound
up in a highly globalised and profoundly interdependent food system,
whose dominant agricultural production methods are driving environ-
mental destruction and devastation across the globe, pushing us further
to the brink of several climate tipping points. The manipulation of
transboundary river flows in one country through the construction of
large-scale hydropower plants has an immediate effect on the water flows
in neighbouring countries. In the same vein, the pollution of one part of
a transboundary river through toxic or other industrial waste can devas-
tate entire ecosystems, endanger agricultural production and threaten the
livelihoods of communities in neighbouring countries. The fossil-fuelled
energy patterns our modern civilisation depends on have a planetary
impact on the Earth-system inevitably transforming the planet’s climate
for millennia to come. Our ecosystems are vital to the health of the entire
Earth-system and play a major role in the stability of our societies.
Our approach to these interconnected and planetary challenges,
however, is profoundly dysfunctional. In many sectors of global gover-
nance, the governance architecture has evolved in unprecedented ways
to facilitate global approaches to these challenges. Since the 1990s,
cross-border cooperation has become more institutionalised, dynamic and
transnational than ever before. Correspondingly, the global governance
architecture has also become more fragmented, crowded and gridlocked,
with states, NGOs, social movements, cities, companies, philanthropic
330 M. FRAUNDORFER
foundations and other actors competing for influence and authority. And
more often than not, global coordination and cooperation efforts navigate
through an opaque architectural maze without a clearly defined global
authority.
Within this vast ocean of fragmentation, however, a few archipelagos
of international and transnational authority exist which have been able
to pool national interests and promote international and transnational
cooperation. Since an overarching global authority is out of sight, global
problem-solving efforts will have to contend with those few archipelagos.
The global response to SARS in 2002/03 threw light on how crucial a
respected global authority can be in tackling global pandemics. An inter-
national organisation like the WHO is only as strong as its member states
want it to be. During the months of the global spread of SARS, the WHO
was granted by its member states the authority to act as the central and
overarching authority above nation states to successfully coordinate the
global response to the crisis. The case of SARS made perfectly clear that a
global pandemic is most effectively tackled through international cooper-
ation steered by a strong international or transnational authority, in this
case the WHO. The authority of the WHO was further boosted by reli-
able transnational surveillance and monitoring networks that laid bare the
attempts of states like China to cover up the outbreak. The pandemic
amounted to a transnationalisation of national interests, as states realised
that their national interest was best served by relying on the interna-
tional authority of the WHO. And so, states readily accepted the increased
authority of the WHO. The case of the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic illus-
trated that transnational NGOs like MSF, backed by a global movement
of doctors, epidemiologists and public health experts, can also have a
major impact on containing infectious disease outbreaks. The response to
COVID-19, however, has reminded us how a lack of international coop-
eration compounded by national efforts to undermine and marginalise
international authorities like the WHO and transnational coordinating
mechanisms like COVAX can actively exacerbate the spread of the virus
and significantly prolong a pandemic.
In the area of freshwater protection, an effective (global) governance
architecture hardly exists. The 1990s witnessed a push towards intensified
institutionalisation and global coordination, involving the proliferation of
multistakeholder approaches and institutions, such as the World Water
Council and the Global Water Partnership. While the proliferation of
initiatives, platforms, conferences and mechanisms on transnational water
9 CONCLUSION 331
governance has been unprecedented since the 1990s, an international

water organisation with universal membership, similar to the WHO or the
FAO, is non-existent. The loose patchwork of organisations, institutions
and mechanisms makes it difficult to discern a central and overarching
global authority. Instead, this mandate is dispersed across a multitude of
UN agencies, organisations and multistakeholder partnerships.
In the same vein, a global energy architecture with a central and
overarching authority is non-existent. Some institutions, however, have
grown into permanent and institutionalised global nodes to concentrate,
promote and advance some degree of international energy cooperation.
And yet, these institutions address either specific energy types, such as the
IAEA (nuclear energy), OPEC (oil) or IRENA (renewables). Or these
institutions are heavily Euro-centric and biased towards highly devel-
oped countries, as exemplified by the IEA. Given its dominant focus
on fossil fuels as well as the Western world, the IEA’s authority as the
central global node in the field of international energy cooperation has
increasingly weakened since the 1990s. The IEA is not a universal organ-
isation like the WHO and the FAO, and its authority has weakened as
a consequence of its incapacity to lead the global push towards renew-
able energies and reflect the tremendous impact of the rise of new energy
consumers from the global south. After its creation in 2009, the interna-
tional renewable energy organisation IRENA has acquired the position
of the central authority on renewable energy cooperation. Unlike the
IEA, IRENA is a universal organisation with a global focus on renewable
energy cooperation and is based in a country in the global south.
In global environmental governance, a complex, multilayered and
multi-actor architecture has emerged over the last thirty years to tackle
the global challenges of ozone depletion, rising greenhouse gases, defor-
estation, the loss of biodiversity and other aspects of environmental
degradation. Greenhouse gas emissions reductions and environmental
degradation have become a key priority on the global agenda, pervading
the actions and discourses of governments, international organisations
and transnational actors. But even though climate change is the funda-
mental challenge of our time, the global environmental governance
architecture fundamentally lacks a central authority to coordinate the
global climate response. UNEP, originally designed as a central authority,
is an organisation without a global mandate, lacking the power to act as a
global authority as is the case with the WHO, the FAO or IRENA. While
332 M. FRAUNDORFER
all of these organisations are rife with problems, besieged by grave limita-
tions, they have been able to act occasionally as global authorities in their
respective policy-arenas. In global environmental governance, the lack of
a similar organisation has led to a highly fragmented governance sector,
characterised by a multitude of actors with diverging interests, competing
organisations with overlapping mandates, duplications of efforts and weak
and ineffective outcomes. Instead of transforming UNEP into a World
Environment Organisation, UN member states opted for a weak and
unambitious reform of UNEP in 2012, which did not fundamentally
change UNEP’s ineffective role in confronting climate change.
9.1.2 The Resilience of State-Centric and Colonial Legacies

The fragmented nature of global governance and the weakness of
authority above the nation state are symptoms of the resilient state-centric
(or Westphalian) order and a colonial legacy rooted in nineteenth-century
European power politics. The Westphalian logic of the primacy of the
nation state and the protection of national sovereignty, national interests,
national territories and national borders represents a major obstacle to
the realisation of more international and transnational authority beyond
and above the nation state. Many international approaches to global chal-
lenges continue to be trapped in this logic, obstructing the reform of
outdated and obsolete international organisations, undermining the role
of existing international authorities like the WHO and the FAO, and
preventing the emergence of global authorities beyond and above the
nation state.
Given the proliferation of transnational initiatives and platforms in
global health governance over the last three decades, it has become
much more difficult for states to disrupt and undermine transboundary
health cooperation. But the state-centric logic coupled with the colonial
legacy of international cooperation permeates all governance approaches
to infectious diseases. In the case of SARS, China’s initial reluctance
to share information about the spread of the virus echoed an age-old
dilemma of international health cooperation and threatened to undermine
the global response to the pandemic. The case of Ebola illustrated that
global health responses to disease outbreaks in the global south continue
to be shaped by colonial legacies. The response to the disease outbreak
was characterised by neglecting those people affected by the disease in
developing countries, particularly from marginalised and impoverished
9 CONCLUSION 333
communities. Furthermore, the national and global health responses used

very traditional and state-centric practices like quarantine, travel restric-
tions, the employment of the military and the discursive portrayal of
the virus as an enemy of the state. The case of COVID-19 exempli-
fied the complete breakdown of international health cooperation in the
face of predominantly national approaches to the pandemic. Despite
unprecedented developments in the evolution of a global health gover-
nance architecture since the 1990s, the age-old struggle between national
authority and international/transnational authority remains a defining
feature of global health governance in the twenty-first century.
The unsustainable dynamics of the global food system reproduce
centuries-old inequalities and hierarchical structures. The roots of this
system can be found in colonial times when powerful colonial compa-
nies embarked on the internationalisation of local food markets, trading
food products from the colonies in Africa, Latin America and Asia to
Europe’s colonial empires. The first attempts at international agricultural
cooperation that emerged in the early twentieth century exclusively served
the national interests of Europe’s colonial powers to promote free trade
and reinforce agricultural production. After the Second World War, the
national interests of powerful agricultural exporting states prevented the
FAO from evolving into a global regulatory authority with the power
to regulate the world food trade. A central global authority able to rein
in the worst excesses of the state-centric logic is non-existent. Instead,
international organisations, such as the FAO, WTO, World Bank and
others, have been used by powerful agricultural exporting countries to
promote their national interests (as well as the private interests of the
companies based in those countries) by entrenching and globalising the
commodification of food and the corporate-industrial complex of agri-
cultural production. These practices have marginalised local, inclusive
and democratic food production processes across the world, aggravating
poverty, misery and food insecurity in developing countries.
The state-centric logic is largely responsible for the inefficiencies and
weaknesses of transboundary river governance, exemplified by the inter-
national governance architecture in the Rio de La Plata River Basin.
Although the South American countries of the Rio de La Plata River
Basin have managed to build a highly complex governance architecture,
it is often ineffective and dysfunctional. Transboundary river gover-
nance in the basin is characterised by intergovernmental institutions with
weak or lacking international/transnational authority. Nation states in
334 M. FRAUNDORFER
the river basin are keen to preserve their national sovereignty over the
basin’s natural resources and exploit the rivers’ water to further their
own national interests of economic growth and development. The larger
transnational, global and planetary dimensions connecting the river basin
to the health of the planet’s hydrosphere and biosphere are conveniently
ignored. The governance realities in the Nile River Basin paint a similar
picture. The ecological stability of the Nile River Basin is threatened by
multiple environmental challenges. Given severe geopolitical power rival-
ries among the basin countries, effective transboundary water governance
has been overshadowed by the predominance of a state-centric mindset.
The basin countries have never come far enough to develop even the most
basic transboundary governance architecture to guarantee some form
of interstate cooperation. Hence, to different degrees both river basins
exemplify the failure of the conventional water governance architecture to
tackle the transboundary challenges associated with freshwater resources.
It has also been in nation-states’ interest to protect and maintain
the unsustainable fossil-fuelled energy patterns underpinning our modern
societies—and cross-border cooperation efforts. Energy is a national secu-
rity issue, and investment in energy sources follows the rationale of energy
security. The continued dominance of fossil fuels reflects the dominance of
a state-centric mindset in global governance. Global governance processes
are heavily fossilised and will probably remain so for the foreseeable
future. Notably, the renewable energy revolution has largely relied on
fossil fuels.
This fossilisation of global governance represents a major obstacle to
an effective global approach to CO2 emissions reductions. Global envi-
ronmental governance continues to be profoundly shaped by national
interests, as CO2 emissions reductions are closely linked to fossil-fuelled
energy patterns and governments’ priorities of economic growth and
development. In the same vein, forests and other ecosystems are primarily
regarded as national goods and commodities to be exploited (and defor-
ested) for the sake of economic growth and development.
9.1.3 Capitalist Structures and the Commodification of Nature

Nation states, independent of their political systems and ideologies,
predominantly align their policies, institutions and infrastructures to stim-
ulate economic growth and development. This overarching rationale
fundamentally relies on the commodification of nature, manipulating,
9 CONCLUSION 335
exploiting and devastating the planet’s interconnected ecosystems. The

dominant dynamics and processes of global governance that developed
over the last two hundred years serve this capitalist rationale and exac-
erbate the exploitation of nature through technocratic and technology-
based approaches. The anthropogenic root causes of today’s global
challenges, however, are largely ignored and neglected.
Since the 2000s, global health governance has witnessed a new
biomedical revolution with innumerable global partnerships heavily
investing in the research and development of medicines and diagnosis for
a variety of (neglected) infectious diseases affecting millions of people in
the global south and worldwide. Other transnational initiatives played a
vital role in the development of an effective Ebola vaccine. And one year
after the outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019, several vaccines were rolled
out in countries across the world. While vaccine development is essential
to tackle infectious diseases, technology-based solutions alone are insuf-
ficient to confront the complex socio-economic and ecological factors
underlying infectious disease outbreaks. The dominant focus on these
techno-solutions leaves the underlying factors largely untouched, giving
rise to short-sighted approaches to infectious disease outbreaks. Instead,
biomedical approaches need to be complemented by international and
transnational responses that are able to address the socio-economic
and ecological factors underlying infectious disease outbreaks. This will
require a rethink of how global health governance works. The neglect
of anthropogenic root causes will only make future infectious disease
outbreaks and pandemics more likely. The ecological root cause of the
COVID-19 outbreak has been emphasised by scientists, international
organisations, NGOs, social movements and politicians. But it is uncer-
tain if any serious action will be taken as a consequence of COVID-19
to address accelerating environmental degradation and the loss of our
ecosystems. Instead, international and transnational cooperation efforts
are almost exclusively channelled into the production, manufacturing and
roll-out of vaccines, creating the illusion that vaccines alone will solve the
problem of COVID-19.
Agricultural production lies at the heart of the national (and private)
interests of powerful agricultural exporters. In the twentieth century,
and particularly after the Second World War, the techno-productivist
logic grew in importance. First, as a consequence of the mechanisa-
tion of agriculture in the early twentieth century, then following the
Green Revolution, which globalised the techno-productivist logic, and,
336 M. FRAUNDORFER
since the 1990s, genetic engineering in the form of genetically modified

crops. For the dominant actors in the global food system, the techno-
productivist logic represents the magic solution to problems like poverty,
hunger and food insecurity. While this logic could increase agricultural
production (and the profits of agricultural exporters) in unprecedented
ways, it has had serious side effects, exacerbating social inequalities and
driving environmental degradation across the world. This logic, then,
is largely misplaced to solve the global food-related challenges of the
Anthropocene.
The governance of transboundary rivers has principally emerged to
manage the exploitation of freshwater resources and to facilitate interna-
tional trade, agricultural production and energy production. The gover-
nance approaches in the Rio de La Plata River Basin provide a poignant
example of this commodified approach at the regional level. The trans-
boundary river governance framework that developed in the river basin
over the last fifty years is highly institutionalised, comprising of a complex
and multilayered governance architecture. But its impact on the environ-
mental protection of the river systems has been weak, as it was never built
to address the ecological root causes of the multiple challenges associ-
ated with freshwater resources in the region. Instead, the primary task
of this architecture has been to manage the exploitation of the rivers’
water among the riparian countries and reduce interstate conflict in this
endeavour.
Since our modern societies are extremely energy-intensive, there is no
easy way out of the global energy conundrum. It is even questionable
if highly energy-intensive civilisations like ours can be environmentally
sustainable in the long run. While there has been a global push towards
renewable energies across the world, our societies are so dependent on
fossil fuels that even the renewable energy revolution is fired by fossil
fuels. The global move towards renewable energies like wind and solar
makes complete sense, as phasing out fossil fuels is one of the most effec-
tive ways of reducing CO2 emissions. But wind and solar energy are
not necessarily “greener” and “more environmentally sustainable” than
fossil fuels. The case study of the global smart city movement under-
lined that a new powerful industry is forming around renewable energies,
relying on a similar corporatist logic of marketisation and commoditi-
sation to the fossil fuel industry. Through the global nodes of cities
and the transnational networks of multinational tech companies, this
industry is globally organised, highly influential and extremely effective in
9 CONCLUSION 337
reshaping the renewable energy transitions in line with corporate interests

and technocratic visions. Exclusively tailored to the goal of CO2 emis-
sions reductions, these business-focused and technology-based visions
dangerously marginalise environmental perspectives. Renewable energies
may help reduce CO2 emissions. But at the same time, their environ-
mental impact on the Earth-system should not be underestimated. With
its technocratic and technology-based focus on the global energy crisis,
the global smart city movement is largely incapable of providing socially
and environmentally sustainable solutions. More than that, it is as ineffec-
tive as the UNFCCC climate negotiations in confronting CO2 emissions
reductions. Instead, their corporatist and technocratic logic has turned
the global smart city movement into a new driver of the global energy
crisis.
The dominance of market-driven approaches compounded by a blind
belief in technology-based solutions is no less dominant in global environ-
mental governance. The complex architecture that developed over the last
thirty years is based on the idea that entire ecosystems can be exploited,
sold, traded and commoditised to benefit a country’s economic growth
and development. One of the few success stories of the global environ-
mental governance architecture was the Montreal Protocol to phase out
the production and use of ozone-depleting substances. This success story
contains all the characteristics that mark the failure of global governance
to stop deforestation, environmental degradation and the emission of
greenhouse gas emissions. The Montreal Protocol was essentially state-
centric, followed a market-driven logic and employed a technocratic
approach. In the same vein, ecological concerns were trumped by finan-
cial and economic concerns, and the international negotiations were on
the verge of collapse because of diverging economic interests between the
US and European states. And yet, the Montreal Protocol was eventually
adopted. This means that state-centric and market-driven approaches can
work under very specific circumstances. In the case of ozone-depleting
substances, this approach worked because states’ economic growth and
development did not depend on the production and emission of ozone-
depleting substances. These substances were produced by a tiny group
of countries and a small industry that was already actively looking for
economically more viable alternatives when the negotiations were taking
place. In other words, the success of the Montreal Protocol was largely
due to fortunate circumstances. The problem of greenhouse gas emis-
sions, however, goes to the very heart of the fossil-fuelled logic of global
338 M. FRAUNDORFER
governance, national interests of economic growth and development, and

the commodification of nature.
But not only governments, international organisations and interna-
tional negotiations are trapped in this logic. Transnational city networks
tend to reproduce a similar logic. As crucial nodes in global economic and
financial flows and major centres of economic production and growth,
cities are primarily interested in fostering economic growth. Hence, it is
not surprising that transnational city networks on climate change, like the
global smart city movement, ICLEI and the C40 Cities Group, almost
exclusively promote market-driven, technocratic and technology-based
policy solutions.
9.2 Breaking the Vicious

Circle of Global Governance
The dominant processes and dynamics of global governance feed on a
vicious circle provoking, reinforcing and exacerbating the global environ-
mental challenges of the Anthropocene. Hence, global governance has
failed to provide effective answers to the global environmental challenges
This vicious circle is perpetuated by the following three elements: the
inherent fragmentation of the global governance architecture and the
weakness of international and transnational authority beyond and above
the nation state; the resilience of the state-centric logic and colonial lega-
cies; and the commodification of nature through capitalist, technocratic
and technology-based approaches (Image 9.1).
Over the last two decades, new transnational dynamics have gener-
ated a host of alternative governance approaches to global environmental
challenges. Some of these new approaches, such as the global smart
city movement or transnational city networks on climate action, follow
the traditional trajectories of global governance, reproducing the vicious
circle through a governance logic wedded to capitalist processes of the
commodification of nature.
Other approaches, however, represent radical alternatives and may
serve as blueprints for how global governance can be transformed to
become more effective in confronting the global environmental chal-
lenges of the Anthropocene. These alternative dynamics challenge the
principal elements of the vicious circle of global governance and tend
9 CONCLUSION 339
Image 9.1 The vicious

circle of global
governance (Source
Own)
State-Centric
Institutional
and Colonial
Fragmentation
Legacies
Commodification of
Nature
to address the ecological and socio-economic root causes of global

environmental challenges more effectively.
Some of the most promising and inspiring visions for change in the
global food system come from global social movements. The global food
sovereignty movement, embodied by La Via Campesina and its almost
two hundred partner organisations from around the globe, advocates
radical change and fights for local, inclusive and democratic food produc-
tion, benefitting those food producers that are often the victims of the
techno-productivist mindset and yet are responsible for the majority of
our food production: small-scale farmers, agricultural workers, peasants
and indigenous people. By addressing the socio-economic and polit-
ical realities in developing countries, the food sovereignty movement
mobilises communities from all over the world, giving them a global voice
to articulate a different vision of food production. Rather than relentlessly
drive food production with corporate-driven and technological means, the
food sovereignty movement prioritises ecological alternatives that protect
ecosystems as well as the livelihoods of small-scale farmers and agri-
cultural workers. Given different socio-economic realities in the global
north, the food sovereignty movement has difficulties in connecting with
urban dwellers from cities in developed countries. Here, the food justice
movement represents an urban alternative, addressing the food-related
challenges of urban populations. While also emphasising local, inclusive,
340 M. FRAUNDORFER
democratic and environmentally sustainable food production methods,

the food justice movement is less radical than the food sovereignty move-
ment and makes use of market-driven approaches to change consumer
habits, promote local food production and raise consumer awareness of
how food is produced.
In the same vein, states can be part of socially sustainable solutions
if they join the agenda of global social movements for more democratic
and inclusive decision-making. Under the Brazilian governments of Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016),
Brazil’s Zero Hunger strategy was successful in eradicating extreme
hunger and poverty in the country. Based on local, inclusive, participatory
and democratic approaches to food production, the strategy integrated
a holistic view of food-related challenges. The overwhelming success of
Brazil’s Zero Hunger strategy transformed Brazil into a global leader in
food security strategies, inspiring the global approach to food insecurity
and shaping the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger).
The Zero Hunger strategy was initially crafted by Brazil’s dynamic food
security movement. And the Brazilian government under Lula da Silva
was wise enough to transform this civil society initiative into a national
strategy and government policy. The fruitful collaboration between the
government and Brazil’s civil society transformed civil society actors into
influential stakeholders in shaping the development and implementation
of the Zero Hunger strategy. Many principles of the Zero Hunger strategy
overlap with those of the food sovereignty and food justice movements.
Integrating key characteristics of both movements, the Zero Hunger
strategy promotes local, democratic and inclusive food production, priori-
tising small-scale farmers. And similar to the food justice movement,
Brazil’s Zero Hunger strategy has made extensive use of market-driven
approaches to create markets for food produced locally.
Given the growing international recognition of this model, Brazil
became a leading actor in the 2009 reform of the Committee on World
Food Security (CFS), which was initially created in 1975 to serve as the
central intergovernmental mechanism for all issues related to food secu-
rity. Over the years, the CFS became as outdated, obsolete and ossified as
so many other intergovernmental institutions in global governance. And
yet, the CFS represents one of the very few examples of an intergovern-
mental mechanism that was successfully reformed by FAO member states.
Unlike the modest reform of UNEP, the reform of the CFS was so ambi-
tious and radical that member states transformed the new committee into
9 CONCLUSION 341
one of the most innovative, democratic, inclusive and participatory mech-

anisms in global governance today. This outcome, however, would not
have been possible without the significant involvement of civil society—
and the Brazilian government. The Brazilian government scaled up the
lessons learned from the success of the Zero Hunger strategy to the global
level. Brazil became a strong ally of civil society movements, like La Via
Campesina, in reforming the committee and pushing for a prominent
role of civil society in the committee’s decision-making structures. The
reformed committee allows civil society to play a prominent role to pres-
sure states and promote rights-based debates that can be translated into
transnational solutions with a rights-based and environmental focus. In
many ways, the committee represents one of the very few examples of
transnational democracy in global governance.
Another radical reinterpretation of governance has taken place in the
area of freshwater protection. In 2017, the Whanganui River in New
Zealand was granted legal personhood. The granting of legal personhood
to parts of nature is inspired by indigenous cosmologies whose views on
water (and nature) are diametrically opposed to the modern worldviews
underpinning global governance. While in the modern worldview, river
water primarily serves the economic growth and development of human
societies, indigenous worldviews prioritise the intrinsic ecological value
of rivers for the planet’s ecosystems as well as their interconnectedness
with all parts of nature. This ecological worldview puts the principle of
environmental protection above the principle of economic growth and
development. The court ruling in New Zealand was ultimately the result
of a compromise agreement between the government of New Zealand
and the local Māori, creating a delicate balancing act between modern and
indigenous worldviews, economic interests of exploitation and indigenous
interests of conservation. The governance model with its focus on the
concept of guardianship and its emphasis on democratic, participatory and
inclusive decision-making mechanisms, allowing the meaningful partici-
pation of indigenous communities in governing the Whanganui River,
points to a new model of water governance.
In contrast to similar court rulings in India and Colombia, the gover-
nance model in New Zealand is well-thought-out and appropriately
financed so that this experiment can provide new inspiration for the
integration of ecological perspectives into transboundary river gover-
nance models. This example also highlights that alternative governance
models, which aim to promote an ecological point of view, can only
342 M. FRAUNDORFER
unfold their potential impact if indigenous communities and their world-

views are meaningfully included in the decision-making process. That
is, indigenous communities need to be given the power to shape the
development of these governance models as well as their decision-making
process. Otherwise, alternative governance models risk becoming coun-
terproductive, undermining the ecological vision they sought to promote
and legitimising conventional water governance models.
In energy governance, the citizen-based energy model of Germany’s
Energiewende inspired a reevaluation of energy production and consump-
tion patterns. Germany’s renewable energy turn, like that of countries
worldwide, is fraught with contradictions and dilemmas. Nonetheless,
Germany has shown that energy sectors can be transformed by relying
on citizen and community participation, local and municipal action and
democratic decision-making. The solar and wind power revolution in
Germany’s electricity sector in the 2000s was fuelled by citizens’ efforts
to establish community and citizen-owned solar plants and wind parks,
generating electricity for local needs. Germany’s citizen-based model
demonstrates that renewable energy technologies can be used to benefit
the public good rather than the private interests of a small group of
powerful corporations. The strong environmental movement in Germany
was crucial in shaping politicians’ preferences at that time and creating
the legal framework, such as the Renewable Energies Act in 2000, to
incentivise citizen-based energy production through feed-in tariffs. By
contrast, in the global smart city movement, the major beneficiaries of
renewable energy technologies tend to be private and political elites at
the expense of local and municipal councils, democratic decision-making
and marginalised communities.
Despite the prolific activism of states, international organisations and
cities in environmental governance, the consequences of climate change
are felt more than ever before, the loss of biodiversity across the globe
has accelerated, deforestation continues at unacceptably high rates and
tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions continue to drive global warming.
In environmental governance, indigenous communities have formed a
transnational force to articulate an alternative world view in global gover-
nance. But this alternative view continues to be ignored and is threatened
by the modern world, as are the planet’s ecosystems and last remaining
tropical rainforests. Indigenous communities take the interconnectedness
of the planet’s ecosystems seriously and recognise that they can only
survive in healthy and intact ecosystems. While major policy documents,
9 CONCLUSION 343
international legal frameworks, treaties and summits in global environ-

mental governance have repeatedly paid tribute to the intrinsic ecological
value of ecosystems, global governance actors’ commitment to act on
these statements has remained largely discursive and symbolic. The failure
of indigenous peoples and their global mobilisation efforts to effec-
tively influence these ideational and material structures represents one
of the most poignant expressions of the hopeless inadequacy of global
governance in the Anthropocene.
Although all these promising examples of more democratic and
environmentally sustainable governance alternatives differ in important
aspects and have developed in different political and socio-economic
contexts, they do share some intriguing similarities. They illustrate that
the global environmental challenges of the Anthropocene can indeed
be confronted effectively. And what is even more important, they high-
light that all the tools necessary to confront these challenges already
exist. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Global governance can be
radically transformed through:
1. the prioritisation of holistic worldviews which emphasise socio-

economic factors, the interconnectedness of the planet’s ecosystems
and humans’ role as responsible guardians.
These holistic worldviews can be inspired by indigenous cosmologies. But

it is important to note that many Western philosophers and thinkers have
discussed similar ideas, which have, however, been sidelined or ignored
by mainstream discourses for far too long. Influential philosophers like
Baruch Spinoza, Jeremy Bentham, Charles Darwin and others seriously
discussed the moral and ethical importance of nature (Nash 1989, 122).
Lots of these ideas were rediscovered and further developed in the
1970s. For instance, the US legal scholar Christopher Stone famously
discussed whether trees should have legal standing (Stone 2010). And
the Australian philosopher Peter Singer came up with a treatise on non-
human animal rights (Singer 1995). And today’s global social movements
advocating for non-human animal rights, rights for nature and Earth
Jurisprudence fundamentally question the commodification of nature.
One of the principles of Earth Jurisprudence holds that “human gover-
nance systems at all times must take account of the interests of the whole
Earth community” (Cullinan 2010, 144). And while these ideas have
344 M. FRAUNDORFER
been ridiculed and rejected outright for decades, they are becoming ever
more influential, reshaping mainstream debates, reformulating national
and international law and reforming governance mechanisms.
2. the emphasis on democratic and citizen-based decision-making;
Citizens have a vital role to play in global governance. And democratic

social movements have been responsible for some of the greatest break-
throughs in global governance over the last three decades. The idea
of people power to prevent the abuse of power by the few and give
marginalised people a voice should be at the heart of decision-making,
challenging authoritarian and overly technocratic solutions to global envi-
ronmental challenges. People power is also fundamental to the expansion
of the community of rights holders, integrating non-human animals and
parts of nature into rights-based and holistic approaches.
3. the close collaboration between democratic governments and demo-

cratic social movements to build participatory decision-making
structures that give democratic civil society actors a powerful voice
and an influential role in reshaping policies and political processes at
local, national, international and transnational governance levels.
States remain the most powerful actors in global governance, not

least because of the predominance of state-centric ideas like national
sovereignty, national territory and national borders. On their own, social
movements can be highly influential. But it is in collaboration with
like-minded states that their actions can unfold transformative poten-
tial, particularly in the form of transnational common projects. These
joint collaboration projects can take different forms through various
(de)legitimation practices to strengthen the democratic authority of
international organisations and other global governance mechanisms.
Global governance will still be fragmented. Global governance will still
be permeated by a state-centric logic. And a world government will still
be far out of sight. But a stronger incorporation of these three elements
into global governance processes would at least create the potential for
more democratic, citizen-based and socially and environmentally sustain-
able governance approaches to the global environmental challenges of the
9 CONCLUSION 345
Anthropocene. These alternative approaches could be seen as models to

potentially inspire a virtuous circle of global governance (Image 9.2).
This virtuous circle should be understood as an idealised model with
the potential to inspire systemic change. The dominant dynamics and
processes that perpetuate the vicious circle of global governance have
grown over more than two hundred years and are deeply entrenched
in our modern societies. By contrast, alternative dynamics that could
potentially break this vicious circle are incipient and fragile. And minor
power shifts, such as a change in government, could lead to their gradual
or immediate collapse. The Whanganui River agreement between the
Maōri people and the government of New Zealand represents a delicate
balancing act and carefully calibrated compromise between two diametri-
cally opposed worldviews. Minor power shifts in the government of New
Zealand could bring this governance experiment to a premature end. The
new realities in Brazil have already shown how devastating minor power
shifts can be in derailing original and democratic governance experiments.
Since the far-right, nationalist and climate change denying President Jair
Bolsonaro assumed power in Brazil in January 2019, Brazil’s innovative
foreign policy has collapsed, the country’s world-inspiring Zero Hunger
strategy has disintegrated, and the relentless exploitation of the Amazon
Rainforest and other Brazilian ecosystems has been resumed with renewed
energy and brutal force. Correspondingly, extreme poverty and hunger
Image 9.2 The

virtuous circle of global
governance (Source
Own) Collaboration
between Democratic and
Democratic Citizen-Based
States and Decision-
Democratic Making
Civil Society
Holistic Governance
Approaches
346 M. FRAUNDORFER
in Brazil have reemerged, the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest

has reached unprecedented heights and indigenous communities have to
fear for their survival more than ever before in the history of Brazil’s
young democracy. As in Brazil, the plight of indigenous peoples world-
wide continues, and their global voice remains marginal. The Committee
on World Food Security depends on the willingness of states to keep it
as one of the most democratic and inclusive governance mechanisms in
global governance. And the model of citizen-based energy democracy in
Germany is threatened by the government, large energy companies and
the country’s continued reliance on fossil fuels.
On top of that, these developments take place in a geopolitical
context where democratic governance and the push for democratic
authority beyond the nation state are feverishly contested. Authoritarian
governments, climate change deniers, conspiracy theorists and nationalist
movements have been on the rise across the world.
Notwithstanding these sobering trends, crises have always been a
fundamental catalyst for change. Crises have also been fundamental to
the gradual development of global governance over the last two hundred
years, be it the end of the Napoleonic wars and the creation of the
Congress System in Europe in 1814/15, the establishment of the League
of Nations after the First World War, the emergence of the UN system
after the Second World War or the rise of novel and innovative gover-
nance dynamics after the end of the Cold War. The massive implications
of the global climate crisis are likely to produce another set of transfor-
mations in global governance. What these transformations will look like
remains to be seen. But this crisis opens a unique window of opportunity
to experiment with ideas that have been sidelined, ignored and ridiculed
for far too long. And not only this book has shown that extraordinary
democratic and citizen-based transformations are possible. Transformative
change is all around us.
Since the historic decision in 2017 to grant the Whanganui River in
New Zealand legal personhood, more and more rivers across the world
are granted a similar status. Since the first national parliaments declared a
climate emergency in 2019, governments across the world have followed
suit and acknowledged that economies require a major rethink to address
the global climate crisis (Climate Emergency Declaration 2021). And in
many societies, serious debates about the consequences of global climate
change have moved from the margins of society to the very centre.
In the end, the concluding words of the 1995 Commission on Global
Governance could not be more relevant today:
9 CONCLUSION 347
The collective power of people to shape the future is greater now than
ever before, and the need to exercise it is more compelling. Mobilizing
that power to make life in the twenty-first century more democratic, more
secure, and more sustainable is the foremost challenge of this generation.
The world needs a new vision that can galvanize people everywhere to
achieve higher levels of co-operation in areas of common concern and
shared destiny. (1995, 1)
The encouraging governance models presented in this book underline

that the collective power of people can indeed change things for the better
and break the vicious circle of global governance to build a more virtuous
global governance system that draws more strongly on democratic ideals
and holistic visions of our place on this planet. Let me therefore end with
the concluding lines of Rodanthi Tzanelli’s poem Rewinding the Crisis:
“Close your eyes and dream, but remember to open them again with
anticipation / as you drift to the centre of policies in need of radical
change, / not lullabies on the cradle of civilisation, but a loud polyphony
of protest / we can be better, we can stay alive, we and our star”.
References
Climate Emergency Declaration. 2021. Climate Emergency Declarations in 1,940
Jurisdictions and Local Governments Cover 826 Million Citizens [Online].
Available from https://climateemergencydeclaration.org/climate-emergency-
declarations-cover-15-million-citizens/. Accessed 17 May 2021.
Commission on Global Governance. 1995. Our Global Neighbourhood: The
Report of the Commission on Global Governance. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Cullinan, C. 2010. Earth Jurisprudence: From Colonization to Participation. In
State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustain-
ability, ed. Worldwatch Institute, 143–148. Washington, DC: Worldwatch
Institute.
Morton, T. 2014. Victorian Hyperobjects. Nineteenth-Century Contexts 36 (5):
489–500.
Nash, R.F. 1989. The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics.
Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.
Singer, Peter. 1995. Animal Liberation, 2nd ed. London: Pimlico.
Stone, C.D. 2010. Should Trees Have Standing? Law, Morality, and the Environ-
ment, 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Index
A 169–171, 177, 180, 182, 184,

Abu Dhabi, 255, 259–261 185, 187, 192, 193, 203, 206,
Abuse of power, 94, 110, 344 207, 218, 219, 221, 222, 232,
Accountability, 87, 100–102, 110 329, 333, 335, 336
ActionAid, 47, 103, 188 Agricultural workers, 166, 193, 194,
Aedes Aegypti, 122 339
Africa Agriculture, 1, 17, 29, 32, 50, 58,
North Africa, 117, 120 63, 83, 161–163, 165, 166,
Sub-Saharan Africa, 119 168–172, 176–178, 182, 184,
Western Africa, 48, 128, 136, 186, 189, 190, 193, 203, 205,
138–140, 146, 149 211, 215–217, 219, 223, 296,
African Union, 40, 139, 286 335
Afro-Colombian, 231 Agroindustry, 176, 185
Agenda Agrotoxics, 206
agenda 21, 212 Aichi targets, 312
agenda-setting, 100 Amazon Rainforest, 2, 27, 248, 249,
political agenda, 38, 81, 212, 272, 295, 345, 346
296 Amazon river, 210, 217
Agreement on Agriculture, 170, 177, Americas, 25, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 66,
180 117, 124, 242
Agricultural exporters, 83, 162, 170, Anglo-American, 38
193, 335, 336 Animal trafficking, 142
Agricultural production, 2, 3, 5, 16, Annex 1 parties, 291
17, 58, 91, 161–163, 165, Anopheles, 117, 118, 122
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 349
license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88156-6
350 INDEX
Antarctica, 8, 104 disaggregated authority, 79

Anthropocene, 2, 7, 10, 11, 14–16, international authority, 37, 40, 41,
18, 19, 23–26, 28, 30, 31, 52, 60, 67, 68, 131, 134, 148,
33–36, 61, 63, 65, 66, 68, 90, 150, 254, 292, 330
96, 98, 117, 120, 121, 123, 147, liquid authority, 81–83
150, 151, 161, 192, 193, 195, overarching authority, 81, 100,
203, 249, 250, 273, 274, 283, 215, 272, 330, 331
309, 310, 317, 319, 327, 328, reflexive authority, 81, 83, 84, 90,
336, 338, 343, 345 109
Anthropogenic, 1, 2, 17, 24, 26, 28, spheres of authority, 79, 80, 109
31, 33, 34, 121, 172, 173, 210, supranational authority, 79, 86, 211
228, 283, 295, 296, 335 transnational authority, 15, 36, 41,
Anthropos, 30, 31 42, 52, 67, 68, 81, 148, 233,
Antimicrobial resistance, 120, 122 330, 332, 333, 338
Aquifer, 17, 205, 213, 216, 220–222 Aviation, 40, 57, 67, 292, 293, 295
Guarani aquifer, 217, 220, 221
Aral Sea, 34, 207, 208
B
Architecture, 3, 13, 15–19, 36, 55, Bacteria, 121
58, 59, 67–69, 90, 91, 93, 123, Bangladesh, 229
126, 148–150, 193, 214–216, Baruch Spinoza, 343
218, 222–224, 232–234, 241, Basin, 9, 17, 27, 210, 215–226, 230,
250–253, 257, 272, 284–286, 233, 234, 248, 333, 334, 336
296, 301, 316, 317, 328–331, Bats, 128, 134, 141, 142
333, 334, 336–338 Bauman, Zygmunt, 61, 62
Arctic, 26, 27 Bayan Obo, 249, 250
Argentina, 162, 163, 175, 176, 217, BBC, 6, 58, 145, 265
220 Beef, 121, 163, 172, 173
Asia, 25, 38, 43, 44, 118, 120, 128, Behavioural, 91–93, 109
129, 141, 167, 172, 174, 176, Belo Monte, 207
242, 333 Bentham, Jeremy, 343
Association of Southeast Asian Berlin, 4, 65, 77, 251
Nations (ASEAN), 40 Bern, 39, 56
Asteroid, 9 Biden, Joe, 92, 144
Asunción, 217 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 50,
Aswan High Dam, 223 51, 145
Atlantic rainforest, 6, 217 Biobanks, 64, 68
Atmosphere, 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 24, 25, Biodiesel, 250, 307
28, 29, 34, 60, 104, 327 Biodiversity, 2, 8, 44, 46, 63, 64,
Atrato River, 227 121, 163–166, 177, 207, 246,
Attenborough, David, 6 249, 258, 263, 295, 298, 312,
Authoritarian, 28, 89, 195, 344, 346 313, 316, 318, 331, 342
Authority Biogeochemical, 163, 164
INDEX 351
Biome, 217 Carbon dioxide, 1, 7, 18, 27, 29, 34,

Biomedical, 118–120, 123, 145, 147, 245, 291
148, 150, 335 Carbon sink, 298
Biosphere, 3, 24, 31, 32, 121, 163, Caribbean Community (CARICOM),
172, 173, 206, 210, 219, 234, 40
334 Catholic Church, 118
Bolivia, 217, 220 Cattle farming, 164
Bolsa Familia, 186
Cerrado, 176, 217
Bolsonaro, Jair, 145, 187, 345
Chaco, 217
Bonn, 63, 108, 111, 255, 260
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy Chernobyl, 34, 247, 248, 267
(BSE), 121 Chimpanzee, 119, 120, 226, 227,
BP, 246, 252 297
Brasília, 217 China, 25, 34, 44, 54, 58, 82, 85, 89,
Brazil, 6, 16, 43, 47, 49, 54, 81, 85, 125, 128–131, 133, 142, 144,
107, 144, 163, 174–178, 182, 174–176, 206, 229, 249, 253,
183, 185–187, 191, 194, 195, 265, 270, 291–295, 330, 332
210, 217–220, 247, 249, 253, Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs),
285, 306, 307, 340, 341, 345, 287–289
346 Chocolate, 2, 56, 163, 164
Britain, 32, 33, 54, 89, 125, 169, Christian Democratic Union (CDU),
172, 242 270
British East India Company, 49, 167 Chytridiomycosis, 121
Buenos Aires, 217 Cities, 3, 9, 10, 15, 18, 19, 24, 38,
Bürgerenergie, 269 41–45, 49, 53, 54, 60, 79, 108,
Burundi, 224, 225 111, 122, 129, 132, 143, 144,
182, 184, 194, 203, 204, 217,
C 245, 257–259, 262, 263, 265,
C40 Cities, 19, 45, 105, 301, 274, 295, 301–305, 307–309,
303–305, 308, 318 318, 328, 329, 336, 338, 339,
Cadbury, 56 342
Cairo, 43, 204 Citizen-based, 19, 274, 342, 344, 346
Canada, 11, 46, 130, 131, 140, 162, City-state, 123
253 Civilisations, 3, 7, 10, 16, 24, 25, 27,
Capitalism, 32, 33, 50, 66, 85, 90, 30, 37, 55, 60–62, 66, 67, 117,
109 161, 203, 206, 222, 242, 246,
Capitalist, 19, 28, 32–35, 56–59, 65, 272, 283, 318, 327, 329, 336,
66, 68, 89–91, 93, 95, 108, 111, 347
258, 261, 262, 267, 315, 328, Civil society, 19, 45, 46, 48, 49,
334, 335, 338 51–53, 84, 87–91, 94, 95,
Capitalocene, 32, 33, 35, 66 98–105, 108–110, 183,
Car, 245, 307 186–192, 194, 254, 257, 266,
352 INDEX
267, 284, 285, 303, 340, 341, Commodification, 19, 34, 59, 169,
344 180, 192, 233, 329, 333, 334,
Climate 338, 343
climate change, 2, 3, 7, 8, 19, 24, Commoditisation, 214, 215, 274, 336
28, 29, 33, 34, 44–46, 48, 49, Commodity, 56, 162, 166, 170, 171,
60–62, 79, 84, 91, 95, 100, 175, 176, 178, 183, 213–215,
118, 187, 189, 210, 215, 216, 222, 244, 298, 299, 309
221, 222, 246, 254, 255, 258, Companies, 15, 17, 38, 42, 47–51,
262, 263, 302, 303, 305–309, 53, 54, 56, 58, 67, 79, 84, 87,
316, 318, 327, 331, 332, 338, 91, 94, 105, 107, 110, 127, 140,
342, 345, 346 146, 148, 167, 170, 171, 174,
175, 178, 181, 192, 193, 212,
climate crisis, 28, 29, 35, 65, 66,
215, 244, 252, 257, 259–261,
90, 192, 301, 304, 309, 315,
263, 264, 269, 271, 274, 289,
319, 328, 346
300, 303, 306, 329, 333, 336,
climate emergency, 346 346
CO2 emissions, 3, 18, 19, 26, 29, 31, Compromise, 54, 183, 227, 234,
33, 46, 59, 62, 68, 107, 165, 288, 298, 341, 345
173, 174, 246, 261, 265, 271, Conching, 56
273, 274, 287, 289–296, 300, Conflict, 3, 4, 17, 41, 45, 58, 77, 84,
301, 307, 308, 315, 317, 318, 137, 170, 205, 211, 216,
334, 336, 337 218–222, 225, 229, 336
Coal, 10, 17, 33, 34, 59–61, Congress system, 37, 38, 55, 346
242–244, 246, 251, 252, 265, Conquistadores , 117
266, 271, 273 Conrad, Joseph, 242
Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Conservation, 64, 96, 179, 215, 221,
Innovations (CEPI), 145 226, 228, 230, 232, 234, 284,
Coastal, 44, 204, 210 297, 313, 341
Cold War, 4, 11, 12, 41, 46, 52, 58, Constitutionalised, 79, 94
67, 94, 126, 328, 346 Contaminated, 248, 249
Colombia, 17, 216, 227, 229, 231, Coordinating Body of Indigenous
232, 235, 341 Organisations of the Amazon
Basin (COICA), 313
Colonisation, 25, 36, 66, 310
Cordons sanitaires , 123
Columbus, Christopher, 33 Corporate social responsibility, 102
Combustion engine, 66, 243 Corporation, 34, 47, 49, 52, 59, 95,
Commerce, 42, 43, 55–57, 59, 108, 110, 139, 261, 263, 274, 342
135 Corruption, 136
Committee on World Food Security Cosmopolitan, 12, 78, 302, 303, 305
(CFS), 16, 52, 87–89, 91–93, Costa Rica, 163, 265
97, 183, 188–191, 194, 195, Court of Justice of the European
340, 346 Union, 80
INDEX 353
COVAX, 145, 146, 330 representative democracy, 98

Cover-up, 130, 143, 148 transnational democracy, 15, 195,
COVID-19, 2, 3, 15, 16, 58, 91, 341
122, 128, 140–151, 295, 304, Democratic, 5, 16, 19, 47, 53,
305, 329, 330, 333, 335 86–90, 94, 95, 97–101, 109,
COVID-19 (ACT) Accelerator, 145 110, 180, 183, 184, 187, 188,
Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, 121 192, 194, 195, 235, 249, 269,
Crisis, 10, 48, 82, 88, 91, 93, 274, 333, 339–347
131–136, 138, 141, 142, 144, democratic practices, 94, 95, 98,
171, 188, 205, 252–254, 274, 99, 109, 110
319, 330, 337, 346 Democratic Republic of Congo, 134,
Crop genebanks, 63 136, 224, 225
Cross-border cooperation, 15, 59, Dengue, 122, 219
104, 211, 312, 329, 334 Denmark, 4, 254, 265, 266, 270
Crutzen, Paul, 23, 31 Desertification, 10, 287, 298
Developed countries, 53, 128, 150,
D 253, 272, 288, 290, 291, 293,
Dam, 206, 207, 218, 223 331, 339
Damascus, 42 Developing countries, 47, 58, 87, 88,
Dam-building, 24, 206, 207, 210 127, 128, 169, 170, 176, 194,
Danube, 211 262, 286, 289–291, 293, 294,
Darwin, Charles, 343 299, 300, 306, 312, 332, 333
Decision-making, 4, 6, 36, 38, 40, Development, 10, 14–18, 26, 28,
48, 51–54, 59, 79, 85–90, 31–36, 40–42, 45–47, 49–52,
93–95, 99–102, 104, 107, 55–57, 61, 65–67, 96, 98, 99,
109–111, 181, 188, 194, 195, 111, 120, 126, 127, 130, 140,
215, 235, 249, 253, 267, 269, 142, 143, 145–148, 150, 151,
274, 286, 287, 299, 301, 310, 162, 171, 172, 177, 182, 190,
328, 340–342, 344 204, 210, 211, 213–216, 218,
Deep time, 62, 63, 68, 69 219, 221, 224, 230, 233, 234,
Deep-time organisations, 63 243, 244, 255, 256, 258–260,
Deforestation, 1, 2, 16, 18, 19, 27, 262–264, 270–272, 283–286,
32, 33, 46, 122, 135, 148, 164, 289, 293, 294, 297–300,
173, 175, 187, 217, 241, 248, 305–309, 312, 313, 315,
296–301, 310, 316–318, 328, 317–319, 333–335, 337, 338,
331, 342, 346 340–342, 346
Delhi, 262, 303 Dinosaurs, 8, 9
Deliberative, 95 Direct air capture and carbon storage
Delta del Paraná, 217 (DACCS), 29
Democracy Discourses, 91, 103, 106, 212, 258,
global democracy, 95 260, 263, 307, 315, 316, 331,
participatory democracy, 98, 99 343
354 INDEX
Discursive, 91, 92, 109, 319, 343 305, 306, 309, 312, 317–319,
Disease, 1–3, 13, 15, 16, 19, 39, 44, 334, 337, 338, 341
48, 50, 51, 56, 59, 60, 67, 68, Economic values, 213
82, 117–137, 139–144, Ecosystems, 2, 7, 9, 15, 24, 27, 68,
147–151, 162, 168, 173, 205, 91, 95, 96, 98, 121, 122, 164,
210, 215, 219, 250, 251, 257, 166, 173, 175, 176, 205–207,
283, 302, 327–330, 332, 335 210, 213–215, 217, 219–222,
viral respiratory disease, 128 226–228, 231, 232, 234, 241,
Doctor, 6, 47, 129, 137, 148, 330 248, 261, 309, 310, 312, 316,
Double standards, 87, 88 317, 319, 329, 334, 335, 337,
Droughts, 10, 44, 61, 205, 216, 219, 339, 341–343, 345
220, 222, 298 Edison, Thomas, 251
Drugs, 4, 127, 140, 145 Egypt, 203–206, 223–226
Drugs for Neglected Diseases Einstein, Albert, 77–79, 82, 108, 247
initiative (DNDi), 127 Electricity, 206, 250, 251, 256,
Dublin Principles, 212, 213, 215 264–266, 268–271, 273, 293,
Dubrovnik, 123 308, 342
Elite, 167, 264, 267, 307
E Empires, 42, 117, 203, 242, 243
Earth Energiegenossenschaften, 268
Earth Jurisprudence, 343 Energiewende, 18, 255, 266, 267,
Earth Summit, 4, 46, 51, 212, 285, 270, 271, 342
287, 289, 297, 298 Energy
Earth-system, 2–4, 7, 9, 10, 16, 18, energy consumption, 2, 3, 14, 45,
24, 26–32, 35, 59, 60, 62, 65, 163, 242, 246, 306
66, 68, 150, 163, 166, 172, energy cooperative, 268, 269
176, 193, 211, 233, 242, 283, energy democracy, 266, 270, 346
327, 329, 337 energy production, 17, 84, 210,
EAZA biobank, 63, 64 222, 232, 267, 272–274, 283,
Ebola, 15, 16, 48, 128, 134–140, 293, 327, 336, 342
144, 146–150, 330, 332, 335 Entanglements, 14, 19, 36, 59, 62,
Ecological, 16, 28, 95, 98, 99, 117, 63, 65, 68, 69, 265, 328
166, 195, 207, 216, 222, 226, Environment, 2, 5, 24, 32, 46, 55,
232–235, 260, 261, 283, 298, 63, 107, 122, 161, 171, 173,
300, 301, 308, 317–319, 213, 215, 257, 261, 263, 264,
334–337, 339, 341–343 283, 284, 286, 287, 289, 298,
Economic Commission for Latin 312, 314
America and the Caribbean Environmental
(ECLAC), 218 environmental challenges, 1, 13,
Economic growth, 5, 31, 32, 34, 59, 14, 18, 19, 42, 44, 45, 52, 60,
68, 142, 176, 233, 234, 262, 65, 66, 89, 90, 95, 96, 110,
263, 272, 293, 294, 298, 299, 111, 148, 192, 205, 219, 220,
INDEX 355
234, 250, 263, 283, 285–288, Exploitation, 33, 36, 59, 220, 222,
302, 305, 308–310, 313, 315, 228, 232–234, 273, 274, 301,
317, 318, 328, 329, 334, 338, 312, 335, 336, 341, 345
339, 343, 344 Extinction Rebellion, 93
environmental degradation, 1, 3, Extra-terrestrial, 35
17, 32, 35, 42, 44, 48, 66,
122, 135, 142, 147, 150, 151,
193, 205, 210, 211, 216, 217, F
222, 226, 232, 245, 246, 262, Fairness, 86–90, 109
284, 302, 312, 316–318, 328, Farming, 31, 161, 162, 168, 171,
331, 335–337 172, 182, 184, 226
Fatality, 128, 135, 141, 148, 149
environmental devastation, 2, 3, 16,
Feed-in tariffs, 268, 270, 271, 342
217
Fell, Hans-Josef, 267
environmental governance, 19, 87,
Fertiliser, 162, 164, 165, 169, 176,
107, 108, 284, 312–314, 316,
183
317, 342
Finance, 43, 57, 82, 104, 230, 235,
Ethiopia, 206, 223–225
341
Ethnocide, 310
Financial Fund for the Development
Eurocentric, 38 of the La Plata Basin
Europe, 8, 12, 13, 16, 25, 31, 33, (FONPLATA), 218
34, 36–40, 42, 47, 49, 53, Financialisation, 169, 170
55–58, 65, 66, 117–121, 129, Financial speculation, 171
134, 136, 144, 146, 162, 163, First World War, 37, 55, 120, 124,
165, 174, 183, 192, 210, 211, 346
225, 243, 244, 249, 251–253, Fleas, 118
266, 288, 289, 333, 346 Flood, 61, 170, 205, 223
European Coal and Steel Community Flooding, 10, 44, 219, 222, 304
(ECSC), 40, 252 Florence, 123
European Commission, 86, 104, 211, Flying rivers, 296
259 Food
European Communities, 4 fast food, 245
European Court of Human Rights, food chain, 127, 165, 171, 177,
80, 102, 104 248
European Economic Community, 40, food insecurity, 16, 42, 95, 177,
173 185, 186, 188, 189, 193, 194,
European Organisation for Nuclear 219, 333, 336, 340
Research (CERN), 11–13 food justice, 16, 93, 97, 183, 184,
European Space Agency, 11 194, 339, 340
European Union (EU), 4, 40, 50, 54, food loss, 165
79, 86, 92, 93, 104, 139, 252, food security, 16, 45, 52, 83, 108,
259, 286, 291, 294, 295 127, 169, 178–180, 185,
Event Horizon Telescope, 11, 13 188–192, 210, 258, 340
356 INDEX
food sovereignty, 16, 91, 93, 97, Freud, Sigmund, 77, 78, 82
178, 180–184, 194, 339, 340 Fukushima, 247, 248, 270
food supply, 121, 161, 205, 258 Fungus, 120, 121
food system, 165, 169, 177, 182, fungi, 121
183, 190, 192, 329
Food and Agriculture Organisation of
G
the United Nations (FAO), 40,
G7, 37, 47
52, 79, 83, 104, 127, 165, 166,
G8, 47, 257
168, 169, 172–175, 178–180,
G20, 37, 47, 257, 259
185, 186, 188, 189, 191–193,
Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin,
215, 217, 219, 233, 256, 285,
229
296, 300, 301, 310, 331–333,
Ganges river, 227, 229
340
GAVI Alliance, 127, 145
Forest governance, 18, 296, 299–301,
General Agreement on Tariffs and
310, 313
Trade (GATT), 57, 58, 173
Forest nations, 298–300
Genetically modified, 162, 163, 177,
Forest Principles, 297–299, 313 178, 193, 336
Forest Stewardship Council, 105 Geneva, 39, 45, 108, 111, 137, 286
Fossil fuels, 1, 3, 10, 18, 32–34, 59, Genocide, 310
60, 84, 91, 162, 243, 246, 247, Geoengineering, 28, 29, 65
249–251, 254, 257, 262, Geological, 7, 10, 23–26, 30, 35, 65,
265–268, 271–274, 283, 293, 327
294, 315, 327, 331, 334, 336, geological force, 26, 30, 65
346 geological time, 24, 35, 36, 61–63,
Fossilisation, 274, 334 68
Fracking, 246, 247 Geologists, 24, 25
Fragmented, 3, 5, 15, 19, 67, 68, 79, Geology, 23
80, 85, 94, 102, 109, 182, 210, Geopolitical, 11, 80, 89, 108, 109,
211, 214, 216, 219, 222, 233, 126, 234, 334, 346
256, 257, 272, 300, 301, 311, Germany, 18, 63, 78, 81, 93, 130,
317, 328, 329, 332, 344 252, 254, 255, 257, 260,
fragmentation, 4, 53, 54, 93, 102, 266–271, 274, 285, 342, 346
215, 330, 338 Germ theory, 150
France, 54, 81, 85, 174, 243, 252, Glaciers, 10, 60, 205
284 Global
Freshwater, 1, 14, 17, 19, 84, 107, global architecture, 55, 59, 329
163, 173, 203, 205–207, 210, global authority, 68, 82, 192, 233,
211, 213, 215–218, 220, 316, 330, 331, 333
232–234, 250, 283, 327, 330, global challenges, 3, 5, 14, 42, 43,
334, 336, 341 45, 46, 50, 51, 53, 54, 60–63,
Freshwater pollution, 284, 328 79, 80, 83, 85, 95, 123, 134,
Freshwater scarcity, 3, 16 142, 151, 258, 274, 302, 305,
INDEX 357
309, 316, 327, 328, 331, 332, Global Water Partnership, 84, 87,
335 105, 212–214, 233, 330
global cooperation, 10–13, 147, Government, 2, 4, 5, 12, 44, 45,
150, 271, 312 47–54, 58, 59, 63, 68, 79–81,
global decision-making, 328 84, 85, 87, 91, 92, 94, 96, 99,
global environmental governance, 101–106, 110, 111, 124–127,
18, 19, 91, 93, 99, 284–286, 130–134, 138, 142–148, 170,
303, 312, 314–317, 319, 331, 171, 179, 181, 182, 185–187,
332, 334, 337, 343 190, 192, 194, 195, 207, 212,
global food system, 16, 48, 49, 93, 213, 221, 224, 227–231, 234,
127, 165, 166, 169, 171, 178, 243, 249, 254, 255, 257,
180–182, 184, 185, 187, 188, 262–264, 266, 267, 270, 271,
191–194, 219, 316, 333, 336, 284, 286, 287, 289, 290,
339 292–295, 297–300, 302, 303,
305–310, 312, 314, 316, 318,
global governance, 3–6, 10, 11,
328, 331, 334, 338, 340, 341,
13–16, 19, 36–38, 44, 49–61,
344–346
63, 67–69, 79–83, 85–94,
96–111, 139, 142, 147, 149, Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam,
188, 193–195, 211, 212, 234, 206
241, 248–250, 257, 265, 273, Grassroots, 48, 181
304, 305, 308–312, 315, Great Acceleration, 26, 31, 66, 67,
317–319, 328, 329, 332, 334, 245, 283
335, 337–347 Great Oxygenation Event, 30
global government, 5 Great Plague, 118
global health governance, 15, 16, Greece, 42
49–51, 107, 108, 123, 124, Greenhouse gas emissions, 1, 42, 257,
126, 127, 132, 133, 139, 258, 262, 283, 284, 292–295,
145–151, 332, 333, 335 299, 302, 305–307, 316–318,
global risks, 119, 120, 135 328, 331, 337, 342
global south, 43, 99, 127, 146, Greenland, 8, 249
148–150, 183, 189, 253, 272, Green Party, 267, 270
331, 332, 335 Greenpeace, 47, 93, 103, 285
Global Crop Diversity Trust, 63 Green Revolution, 169, 170, 193,
Global Influenza Surveillance 335
Network, 125 Gridlock, 15, 44, 54, 67, 81, 89, 93,
Globalisation, 4, 12, 16, 47, 49, 60, 262, 307, 329
68, 108, 170, 171, 173, 242 Grocery shopping, 163
Global Outbreak Alert and Response Groundwater reservoirs, 17
System (GOARN), 127, 129, Guangdong province, 128–131
132, 133, 138 Guardians, 227, 228, 230, 231, 314,
Global strategic framework, 190–192 343
358 INDEX
Guardianship, 227–229, 231, 235, 186, 191, 213, 215, 227, 310,
341 313, 314
Guinea, 134–137, 140 Human societies, 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 15,
Gulf War, 254 17, 18, 28, 31, 33, 34, 60, 61,
66, 98, 118, 119, 123, 203, 206,
232, 234, 241–243, 318, 341
H Hunger, 2, 9, 16, 83, 143, 168–170,
H1N1, 120, 173 177–180, 185–188, 191, 193,
H2N2, 125 257, 336, 345
H3N2, 125 Hunting and gathering, 32
H5N1, 120, 128, 173 Hybrid, 162, 212, 248
Haber-Bosch-Process, 162 Hydrohegemony, 223, 224
Hanseatic League, 42 Hydropolitics, 223, 225
Health, 5, 6, 39, 50–52, 56, 82, 91, Hydropower, 3, 18, 218, 219, 221,
104, 107, 108, 121, 123–128, 223, 228, 229, 248–250, 265,
130–141, 145, 148–150, 215, 273, 329
222, 232, 234, 248, 257, 264, Hydrosphere, 3, 24, 206, 210, 219,
285, 329, 332–334 232, 234, 334
global health partnership, 147 Hydroxychloroquine, 145
public health, 5, 123, 127, 128, Hygiene, 50, 118, 142, 262
134, 136, 138, 140, 143, 144, Hyperobject, 60, 61, 68, 283, 327
147, 149, 330
Hierarchical, 81, 88, 192, 333
High-income countries, 88, 146, 293 I
Holistic, 19, 147, 194, 212, 213, Iceberg, 205
222, 298, 310, 312, 340, 343, Ice loss, 8
344, 347 ICLEI, 44, 302, 304, 306–308, 318
Holocene, 10, 24, 26, 30 Ideas, 40, 50, 78, 79, 89, 95, 99,
Hong Kong, 44, 120, 125, 128–132 103, 106, 107, 111, 163, 169,
Hospital, 126, 129, 131, 137, 143 181, 183, 260, 261, 343, 344,
Hub, 44, 108 346
Human history, 9, 30, 203, 243, 283 Imperial powers, 37
Human-induced, 13, 31, 61, 62, 172, Inclusive, 16, 53, 86–89, 91, 95, 101,
257 110, 183, 186–188, 190–192,
Humanitarian aid, 45, 137 194, 195, 235, 333, 339–341,
Humanitarian interventions, 80 346
Humanity, 3, 6–9, 14, 23, 25, 26, India, 17, 18, 49, 54, 81, 85, 120,
28, 30, 32, 34, 35, 63, 65, 66, 174, 216, 227, 229–232, 235,
80, 91, 118, 161, 162, 182, 205, 253, 262–264, 291, 293, 294,
211, 212, 232, 241–243, 283, 341
284, 310, 311, 315, 327 Indian Smart Cities Mission, 262
Human rights, 41, 45, 48, 57, 68, Indigenous communities, 19, 46, 93,
88, 89, 96–102, 110, 179, 180, 95, 98, 99, 103, 170, 212, 231,
INDEX 359
235, 300, 309–315, 319, 341, Interdependent, 36, 53, 67, 110,
342, 346 283, 327, 329
Indigenous cosmologies, 19, 91, 99, Intergovernmental, 4, 37, 40, 41, 46,
234, 302, 309, 314, 315, 341, 51–54, 80, 81, 168, 188, 191,
343 212, 218, 225, 233, 254, 293,
Indigenous people, 19, 25, 95, 180, 299, 301, 309, 328, 333, 340
182, 189, 191, 193, 194, 302, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
309–316, 319, 339, 343, 346 Change (IPCC), 84, 86, 91, 289
Individuals, 2, 4–6, 38, 50, 51, 61, International Association of Transport
64, 97, 106, 146, 215, 218, 226, Airlines, 40
311 International Atomic Energy Agency
Indonesia, 2, 130, 164 (IAEA), 221, 248, 252, 253,
Industrial Revolution, 31, 32, 55, 56, 256, 272
61, 66, 242, 265, 283 International Civil Aviation
Industrial standards, 55, 59 Organisation (ICAO), 40, 57,
Inequalities, 33, 38, 47, 53, 146, 292
147, 150, 166, 192, 193, 328, International Committee of the Red
333, 336 Cross (ICRC), 45
Infectious disease outbreak, 15, 123, International Covenant on Economic,
131, 147, 150 Social and Cultural Rights, 179
Information, 35, 64, 100, 101, 103, International Criminal Court, 46, 80,
106, 125–127, 129–131, 133, 103, 104
134, 143, 145, 168, 191, 215, International Health Regulations
253, 255, 259, 262, 286, 290, (IHRs), 126, 130, 134, 138, 144
332 International Indigenous Peoples
Inner Mongolia, 249 Forum on Climate Change
Integrated Water Resources (IIPFCC), 314–316
Management (IWRM), 84, International Institute of Agriculture,
212–215 168
Intellectual property, 47, 55, 58, 59, Internationalisation, 55, 192, 333
107, 170 International Labour Organisation
Inter-American Court of Human (ILO), 39, 40, 285, 316
Rights, 80 International organisations, 4, 6, 14,
Inter-American Development Bank 37–39, 41, 47, 48, 51–57, 59,
(IDB), 218 67, 79, 80, 85, 87–89, 92–94,
Interconnected, 1–3, 10, 15, 17, 19, 96, 102–105, 111, 132, 136,
31, 53, 61, 67, 78, 97, 105, 106, 139, 147, 168, 169, 178, 183,
109, 110, 126, 205, 210, 228, 185, 192, 212, 213, 252,
232, 283, 315, 329, 335 255–257, 284–286, 297, 300,
Interconnectedness, 91, 95, 222, 319, 303, 316, 318, 330–333, 335,
341–343 338, 342, 344
360 INDEX
International Sanitary Conferences, Land-use change, 1, 165

124, 125, 131 La Plata Basin Treaty, 218
International Sanitary Regulations, Large-scale agriculture, 1
124–126 Latin America(n), 13, 38, 164, 167,
International Space Station (ISS), 173, 182–184, 297, 306, 308,
11–13, 161, 203 310, 333
International Telegraphic Union La Via Campesina, 47, 48, 91, 99,
(ITU), 38, 39, 55, 57, 59 103, 180–183, 188, 189, 194,
International Union for Conservation 339, 341
of Nature (IUCN), 64, 284, 297 League of Nations, 37, 39, 55, 93,
International Union of Forest 124, 346
Research Organisations Legal personhood, 17, 96, 99, 216,
(IUFRO), 296 226–232, 234, 341, 346
Internet, 49, 51–53, 58, 59, 101, Legal rights, 17, 96, 99, 223, 226,
126, 131 227, 229–231
Internet Corporation for Assigned Legitimacy, 15, 85–94, 102, 109, 188
Names and Numbers (ICANN), (de)legitimation practices, 15, 90,
52, 59 91, 93
ITAIPU, 218 legitimacy crisis, 85, 93
Liberalisation, 41, 214
Liberia, 134, 135, 137, 139
J Libya, 224, 254
Japan, 11, 12, 50, 81, 297 Lice, 118
JBS, 174 Lifeforms, 30, 62
Johannesburg, 43, 285 Lindt, 56
Little Ice Age, 8, 117
Livestock, 9, 16, 163, 171–173,
K 175–177, 296
Kazakhstan, 12, 207 Livingstone, Ken, 303
Kenya, 224, 225, 286 Local communities, 95, 98, 99, 137,
Kinshasa, 119 174, 189–191, 194, 264, 268,
Knowledge, 12, 32, 82, 83, 86, 103, 270, 300
106, 118, 120, 136, 137, 168, L’Office International d’Hygiene
169, 220, 221, 255, 288, 303, Publique, 39
304, 309, 313 Lombardy, 2
Koch, Robert, 118 London, 38, 42, 43, 108, 133, 251,
Kopenawa, Davi, 309 284, 288, 303, 305
Kyoto Protocol, 287, 290–294, 298 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 185, 187,
340
L
Lake, 1, 17, 203–207, 210, 216 M
Land-grabbing, 174, 191 Malaria, 117, 119, 122, 127
INDEX 361
Malnutrition, 169, 180, 185 Migration, 42

Management, 11, 105, 136–138, 142, Millennia, 3, 8, 23, 26, 34, 42, 69,
165, 210, 213–215, 221, 225, 207, 223, 241, 310, 315, 318,
226, 228, 230, 262, 264, 268, 329
297–299, 304, 305, 307, 308 Mine Ban Treaty, 46, 103
Māori, 32, 227–229, 234, 341 Modern, 2–4, 7, 8, 19, 28, 32, 33,
Market, 48, 55–57, 59, 68, 81, 83, 45, 61, 67, 89, 91, 98, 166,
90, 166, 169–171, 173, 175, 226–229, 232, 234, 242, 250,
184, 192, 214, 249, 254, 258, 272, 284, 309–311, 329,
257–259, 263, 264, 268, 271, 334, 336, 341, 345
288, 300, 301, 304, 307, 308, Modi, Narendra, 262
333, 340 Monitoring, 48, 83, 84, 98, 99, 101,
Market-driven, 170, 183, 187, 194, 102, 123, 125–127, 143, 148,
195, 214, 274, 292, 301, 305, 179, 186, 296, 330
309, 314, 315, 317, 318, 337, Monoculture, 170, 180
340 Monsoon, 27
Marxist, 32 Montevideo, 217
Masdar City, 259–262 Montreal Protocol, 286–290, 293,
Mass extinction, 8–10, 63, 95, 121, 317, 337
226 Morse, Samuel, 38
Mayor, 5, 80, 302–305, 308 Mosquito, 117–119, 122
Meat, 1, 2, 9, 56, 121, 142, 143, Multilateral, 53, 57, 58, 144, 219,
165, 171–176 222, 225, 226, 284, 286, 298,
Meatpacking, 174 300
Mechanisation, 162, 165, 169, 193, Münster, 37
335
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), 47,
48, 103, 108, 136–139, 148, 330 N
Medicine, 47, 49, 51, 58, 119, 127, Napoleonic Wars, 37, 346
128, 135, 142, 335 National Council of Food and
Medicines for Malaria Venture Nutrition Security, 186
(MMV), 127 National interest, 79, 83, 89, 125,
Megacities, 2, 19, 43–45, 217, 301, 146, 148, 169, 192, 193, 233,
303, 304, 306 234, 272, 308, 317, 318, 328,
Merkel, Angela, 270, 271 330, 332–334, 338
Methane, 1, 27, 173, 246, 308 National lockdown, 2
Microbial, 119–121 National sovereignty, 233, 300, 317,
Microorganisms, 120, 121 328, 332, 334, 344
Middle Ages, 117, 118, 123 National territory, 317, 328, 344
Middle East, 65, 129, 247, 252 Nation state, 37, 42, 62, 67, 78, 79,
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome 107, 133, 192, 233, 330,
(MERS), 141 332–334, 338, 346
362 INDEX
Natural gas, 242, 246, 247, 265, 266, Nile Basin Initiative, 224, 225
271, 273 Nile River Basin, 17, 216, 222–225,
Natural habitat loss, 1, 2, 96, 142, 234, 334
147, 148, 150, 328 Nineteenth century, 8, 10, 14, 17,
Natural history, 30, 64 24, 30, 31, 33, 35–38, 42, 45,
Nature, 6, 10, 15, 19, 29, 32–34, 59, 51, 56, 58, 66–68, 89, 117, 120,
60, 80, 87, 89, 93, 94, 96, 98, 124, 125, 129, 150, 162, 168,
100, 102, 110, 141, 143, 144, 216, 243, 244, 306, 328, 329
146, 187, 218, 221, 226–229, Nitrogen, 162, 164, 173
232–234, 247, 251, 257, 264, Nobel Prize, 23
284, 293, 299, 309–311, 329, Nodes
332, 334, 335, 338, 341, 343, nodal governance, 105
344 super-node, 108
Negative emissions, 29 super-structural node, 107
Negotiations, 18, 29, 46, 47, 54, 58, Non-human animal species, 3, 166,
84, 86, 87, 91, 93, 99, 107, 173, 219, 226, 248
183, 186, 189, 190, 192, non-human animal rights, 97, 98,
225–227, 235, 255, 260, 110, 343
287–294, 299, 301–303, 309, non-human animals, 64, 96, 98,
314, 315, 317, 318, 337, 338 110, 126, 148, 173, 226, 228,
Neo-colonial, 19, 90, 111, 135, 328 344
Neoliberal, 46, 47, 57, 58, 84, 170, Non-interference, 37
191, 214, 216, 232, 263, 264, Norms, 36, 38, 81, 90, 220
271, 300, 305, 306, 308 North America, 13, 16, 25, 31–33,
Nepal, 229 38, 40, 49, 53, 58, 66, 117, 129,
Nestlé, 56 134, 136, 144, 146, 162, 163,
Networking, 99, 102, 103 165, 183, 225, 243, 246, 248,
Networks 249, 252, 253, 289
advocacy networks, 79, 95, Norway, 46, 50, 63, 140
103–105, 110 Nuclear energy, 18, 247, 252, 266,
global public policy networks, 104, 272, 273
105, 215 Nurse, 138
government networks, 104
multistakeholder networks, 104 O
regulatory networks, 105, 111 Obama, Barack, 92, 139
Newcomen, Thomas, 242 Oceans, 6, 9, 27, 29, 104, 163, 165,
New World, 25, 33 166
New York City, 303 Oil, 2, 9, 17, 33, 34, 49, 50, 60,
New Zealand, 17, 32, 96, 99, 216, 163, 164, 175, 242–247,
227–232, 234, 235, 266, 341, 251–255, 257, 259, 261, 265,
345, 346 266, 272, 273, 293, 331
Nile, 205, 206, 210, 222–225, 234 pre-salt oil, 247
INDEX 363
Old World, 25 Participatory, 86, 87, 89, 91, 95,

Olkiluoto, 63, 65 101, 110, 191, 192, 213, 227,
Onkalo, 65 235, 258, 340, 341
Organisation of American States participatory decision-making,
(OAS), 40, 218, 221 87–89, 100, 188, 344
Orr, John Boyd, 168, 169, 192 participatory mechanisms, 341
Osnabrück, 37 Passengers, 129, 133
Outbreak, 1–3, 13, 15, 16, 39, 44, Pasteur, Louis, 118
48, 51, 56, 60, 82, 118, 120, Pathogen, 118, 120–123, 132
121, 123, 125–131, 133–137, Peace of Westphalia, 37
139, 140, 142–144, 146–151, Peasant, 48, 91, 99, 103, 170,
250, 328–330, 332, 335 180–182, 184, 193, 194, 339
Overpopulation, 3, 17, 44 Penicillin, 119, 172
Oxygen, 30, 62 People power, 94, 95, 98, 344
Ozone-depleting substances, 290, Performance, 85–89, 92, 109
291, 293, 317, 318, 337 Permafrost, 27, 63, 121, 151
Ozone hole, 287 Pesticides, 17, 162, 173, 176–178,
Ozone layer, 18, 23, 287–290 183
Philanthropic foundations, 15, 42,
49–51, 53, 54, 67, 79, 105, 127,
P 139, 140, 148, 257, 300, 303,
Pacifist, 78 306, 328, 330
Pakistan, 120, 229 Phosphorus, 164, 173
Palestine, 92 Planet, 1, 2, 6–10, 13, 15, 23–28, 30,
Palm-oil plantations, 164 34–36, 44, 60–64, 66, 68, 91,
Pampas, 217 95, 96, 119–121, 133, 161,
Pan-American Health Organisation 164–166, 172, 173, 176, 177,
(PAHO), 39, 124 203, 206, 207, 210, 215, 216,
Pan-American Sanitary Organisation, 226, 228, 231, 232, 234, 241,
56, 124 244, 248–250, 283, 284, 287,
Pandemic, 2, 3, 15, 16, 44, 58, 82, 295, 296, 309–313, 315, 319,
83, 86, 91, 119–123, 128, 130, 327, 329, 334, 335, 341–343
138–142, 144–151, 295, 304, Planetary challenges, 1, 2, 7, 10, 11,
330, 332, 333, 335 13, 16, 67, 68, 78, 79, 161, 272,
Pangolins, 142 284, 329
Panic, 123, 133, 135 Plastic, 26, 206, 288
Paraguay, 217, 218, 220 Pleistocene, 32
Parasite, 118 Pneumonia, 131, 141
Paris, 56, 124, 133, 294, 303 Political economy, 55, 68
Paris Agreement, 29, 92, 294, 295 Pollution, 1, 3, 4, 16, 17, 26, 173,
Parliament, 5, 80, 81, 94, 98, 101, 175, 176, 205, 210, 215, 216,
189, 346 219, 220, 283, 287, 329
364 INDEX
air pollution, 2, 42, 45, 164, 246, Q

263, 284 Quarantine, 123–125, 133, 135, 143,
water pollution, 32, 45, 206, 220 149, 333
Polycentric, 79, 85, 102, 109, 211
Population growth, 9, 31, 42, 104, R
119, 216, 217, 219, 222, 232 R&D, 145
Populist, 100 Radical, 7, 17, 25, 33, 110, 182–184,
194, 295, 318, 338–341, 347
Poverty, 2, 44, 45, 48, 49, 136, 140,
Radioactive, 25, 65, 248, 249
147, 166, 169, 170, 177, 180,
Railways, 55, 60, 119, 243
185, 187, 191, 193, 194, 205,
Ramsar Convention, 297
257, 258, 262, 300, 312, 333,
Rare-earth, 248, 249, 261, 273
336, 340, 345
Reagan, Ronald, 11, 58
Power, 3, 4, 37, 38, 42, 44, 48, 49, Renewable Energies Act, 267, 268,
53–55, 62, 65, 66, 68, 78–83, 271, 342
85, 89, 90, 94, 95, 98–102, Renewables, 18, 84, 91, 246, 248,
106–108, 111, 118, 124, 125, 250, 255–257, 260, 265, 266,
145, 146, 161, 167–169, 173, 268–272, 331
176, 181, 182, 185, 187, 192, renewable energy, 18, 84, 87, 93,
215, 217, 222–225, 228, 231, 246, 248–250, 254–262,
234, 235, 242–244, 247, 248, 265–274, 293, 306, 308, 331,
253, 256, 270, 271, 284, 296, 334, 336, 337, 342
299, 301, 305, 308, 310, 316, Republic of Korea, 141
331–334, 342, 345, 347 Resources, 1, 17, 24, 43, 49, 50, 53,
Power-sharing, 94 68, 84, 95, 99, 102, 103, 106,
Precarious, 48, 128, 136, 140, 147, 107, 137, 138, 140, 146, 163,
170 166, 173, 183, 186, 203, 205,
206, 210–214, 216–222,
Principles for Responsible Investment
230–234, 246, 249, 251, 261,
in Agriculture and Food Systems
273, 284, 298, 299, 304, 307,
(RAI-Principles), 190–192
309, 312, 313, 315, 334, 336
Privatisation, 58, 59, 214 Rhine, 211
Procedure, 79, 85–89, 101, 109 Rights-based, 96, 178, 189–191,
Profit, 47, 50, 63, 104, 171, 193, 193–195, 341, 344
261, 336 Rights of nature, 96–98, 103, 226,
227, 232
Profiteering, 163
Right-wing, 100
Programme for Monitoring Emerging Rio+20, 286
Diseases (ProMED), 126, 127, Rio de Janeiro, 4, 46, 212, 285, 287,
129, 133 289, 297
Public Health Emergency of Rio de la Plata River Basin, 17, 44,
International Concern, 82 215, 217, 220, 233, 333, 336
INDEX 365
River Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

river basin organisations, 216 Coronavirus 1 (SARS-CoV-1),
transboundary river governance, 140, 141
224 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
transboundary rivers, 17, 210, 216, Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),
217, 222, 233, 329, 333, 336, 140–142
341 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
Riverine, 210, 211, 248 (SARS), 15, 16, 44, 82, 83, 86,
Rockefeller Foundation, 50, 169 128–134, 138, 140–144,
Roman Empire, 32, 241 147–149, 330, 332
Rome, 42, 108, 111, 168, 178 Shanghai, 303
Root causes, 146, 147, 150, 151, Sheep Dolly, 177
195, 233, 274, 308–310, 315, Shipping, 56, 57, 60, 129, 211, 243,
319, 335, 336, 339 292
Rousseff, Dilma, 185, 187, 340 Sierra Leone, 134–137
Ruhr Valley, 243, 252 Silk Road, 118
Russia, 4, 11, 12, 54, 85, 291 Simultaneous, 1, 146, 215, 223
Rwanda, 224, 225 Singapore, 130–132, 285, 304
Sixteenth century, 33
Slave, 166, 167, 174, 241
S Smallholders, 91, 103, 189–191, 300
Sanitation, 50, 211, 213, 262, 264 Smallpox, 117, 118, 241
São Paulo, 19, 43, 133, 217, 220, Small-scale farmers, 48, 166, 170,
303, 306–308 177, 180, 183, 194, 205, 339,
Satellite images, 2, 60 340
Saudi Arabia, 292 Smart city, 18, 105, 257–264, 274,
Scheer, Hermann, 267 306, 318, 336–338, 342
Schröder, Gerhard, 267, 270 Social Democratic Party (SPD), 267,
Science, 23, 26, 50, 65, 86, 91, 170 270
Sea-level rise, 45, 304 Social media, 143
Sebastião Salgado, 6 Social movements, 15, 16, 41, 46–48,
Second World War, 4, 9, 12, 26, 31, 51, 53, 54, 58, 67, 79, 87, 88,
39–41, 45, 53, 54, 57, 62, 66, 90, 94, 95, 97, 99, 103, 110,
67, 79–81, 89, 124, 162, 166, 148, 178, 185, 188, 191, 194,
171–173, 175, 193, 206, 244, 266, 267, 328, 329, 335, 339,
245, 252, 256, 283, 284, 288, 340, 343, 344
328, 335, 346 Social structures, 85, 89, 90, 109
Security, 54, 78, 80, 95, 133, 135, Socio-economic, 28, 29, 31, 32, 35,
138, 139, 186, 211, 229, 252, 38, 66, 90, 136, 140, 145, 147,
254, 264, 272, 334 149–151, 242, 328, 329, 335,
Separation of power, 80, 81, 94, 109 339, 343
366 INDEX
Soil, 25, 29, 32, 121, 163, 164, 166, 188, 189, 191–195, 203, 211,
173, 176, 219, 248, 249 216, 220, 221, 233, 242,
Solar 253–257, 259, 262, 265, 289,
solar energy, 251, 255, 269, 270, 291, 292, 294, 302, 303, 305,
273, 336 306, 309, 312, 314, 317, 318,
solar plants, 268, 342 328–330, 332, 337, 340–342,
solar power, 266, 269 344, 346
Solidarity, 97, 98, 110, 145, 146, 169 state-centric, 4, 18, 19, 42, 68, 79,
South Africa, 285 87–89, 149, 234, 293, 301,
South America(n), 17, 40, 44, 96, 302, 312, 317, 318, 328,
124, 176, 215, 217, 218, 221, 332–334, 337, 338, 344
233, 234, 306, 333 Steam engine, 33, 61, 242
South-East Asia, 164, 297 Stockholm, 211, 213, 285
Southern Common Market Stratigraphers, 25
(Mercosur), 40 Stratosphere, 287
Sovereignty, 78, 79, 82, 83, 108, Sudan, 138, 223–226
133, 138, 212 Superpower, 52–54, 173, 185, 187,
Soviet Union, 4, 25, 34, 47, 126, 219, 244
206, 207, 244 Surveillance, 125, 126, 129–131,
Soy, 1, 164, 171, 175–177 133, 136, 148, 263, 330
Space, 6, 11–13, 35, 59–62, 68, 110, Sustainability, 44, 214, 260, 261
133, 203, 211, 244, 304, 308, Sustainable, 45, 95, 105, 147, 170,
327 180, 182, 184, 185, 193, 221,
Spain, 43, 136, 138, 254 225, 232, 257, 258, 260, 261,
Spanish Flu, 120 264, 272–274, 297, 298, 328,
Special Rapporteur on the right to 336, 337, 340, 343, 344, 347
food, 179 Sustainable Energy for All
Species, 1, 7–10, 25, 30, 35, 62–64, initiative–SEforALL, 256
95, 121, 141, 142, 165, 166, Svalbard Global Seed Vault, 63–65,
206, 207, 228, 241, 284, 295, 68
297, 313 Sweden, 213, 265
Species extinction, 1, 16, 24, 32, 48,
95, 96, 205, 215, 226, 284, 316
Stakeholders, 52, 53, 84, 188, 228, T
230, 340 Tanzania, 224, 225
Standard Oil, 244 Technocene, 34, 35, 66
States, 3–5, 14, 18, 19, 37, 39, Technocracy, 86, 88, 90, 109
41–43, 45–47, 51, 53, 57, 58, Technocratic, 28, 65, 86, 89, 91, 109,
67, 78–80, 82–85, 87–91, 93, 142, 214–216, 234, 263, 264,
95, 97–103, 106, 108–110, 125, 274, 294, 300, 308, 309, 315,
126, 130–134, 136, 138, 139, 317, 318, 335, 337, 338, 344
148, 149, 168, 169, 179, 183, Techno-fixes, 29, 308
INDEX 367
Technology, 28, 33–35, 49, 51, 58, transnational cooperation, 19, 38,
59, 65, 66, 106, 150, 151, 169, 51, 148, 218, 258, 313, 328,
177, 180, 195, 253, 255, 258, 330
260–264, 274, 306, 315, 317, transnational movements, 19
335, 337, 338 Transport, 2, 43, 108, 119, 120, 122,
Telephone, 38, 60, 61, 251 124, 129, 132, 165, 203, 243,
Temperatures, 7, 8, 60, 117, 118, 250, 262, 264, 266, 271, 273,
122, 283, 289, 294, 301 292, 293, 305, 306, 308
global temperatures, 1, 7, 8, 10, 27 Travel restrictions, 82, 134, 143, 149,
surface temperatures, 7 333
TRIPS Agreement, 58, 107
Tenure of Land, 190, 191
Trump, Donald, 91, 92, 144, 145,
Territorial sovereignty, 37, 79, 89,
303
214
Trust, 290
Thatcher, Margaret, 58 Tuberculosis, 118, 127
Thirty Years’ War, 37 Twentieth century, 8–10, 17, 18, 31,
Three Gorges Dam, 206 32, 34–36, 38, 40–42, 45, 49,
Thunberg, Greta, 6 56, 60, 68, 96, 117–119, 123,
Time bomb, 27, 121 125, 131, 161, 162, 165, 166,
Tipping point, 8, 27, 163, 176, 210, 173, 174, 177, 192, 193,
295, 301, 329 204–207, 211, 243, 244, 247,
Tokyo, 11, 43, 108, 303 258, 269, 333, 335
Top-down, 139, 264, 266 Twenty-first century, 8, 14, 16, 24,
34, 49, 50, 53, 54, 60, 80, 82,
Toxic, 2, 7, 17, 175, 246, 249, 329
89, 120, 122, 128, 129, 148,
Trade 150, 186, 205, 241, 258, 260,
free trade, 55, 57, 58, 68, 85, 89, 263, 333, 347
90, 109, 169, 173, 191, 192, Tyson and Cargill, 174
211, 333
trade liberalisation, 57, 59, 68, 89,
90, 109, 169–171 U
Transboundary, 4, 5, 36, 38, 42, 67, Uganda, 224, 225
79, 104, 122, 123, 125, 149, UK, 25, 43, 50, 56, 58, 81, 85, 92,
210, 216, 220, 221, 224, 226, 121, 136, 139, 144, 265, 293
232–235, 332, 334 UN Commission on Global
transboundary water governance, Governance, 5, 6
17, 211, 216, 226, 234, 334 Underground water, 220, 249
Transformative, 19, 32, 66, 151, 257 UN-Energy, 256
Transnational UN Forum on Forests, 298, 299, 301
transnational city networks, 19, 42, UN Framework Convention on
44, 67, 105, 301–309, 318, Climate Change (UNFCCC), 18,
338 45, 84, 86, 87, 91, 93, 107, 260,
368 INDEX
287, 289–294, 298, 299, 302, UN Sustainable Development Goal,

314, 315, 337 340
UN General Assembly, 40, 48, 80, UN Treaty on the Prohibition of
138–140, 285 Nuclear Weapons, 47, 103
UN Human Rights Commission, 179 UN Water, 211
United Arab Emirates (UAE), 18, Urbanisation, 17, 24, 31, 42, 104,
255, 259, 260 204, 216, 217, 219, 222, 230,
United Cities and Local Governments 232, 262
(UCLG), 44, 45 Urban planning, 45, 258, 260,
262–264, 304, 307
United Fruit Company, 49
Uruguay, 217, 220
United Nations Convention on USSR, 11, 12, 53, 54, 89, 162
Biological Diversity (CBD), 312 Uttarakhand, 229, 230
United Nations Declaration on the Uzbekistan, 207
Rights of Indigenous Peoples
(UNDRIP), 103, 313, 315
United Nations Environment V
Assembly, 286 Vaccine, 50, 51, 58, 118, 119, 123,
United Nations Environment 128, 135, 140, 142, 145–148,
Programme (UNEP), 79, 93, 150, 151, 335
107, 215, 285, 286, 297, 299, Venice, 123
316, 317, 331, 332, 340 Vienna, 37, 38, 67, 78, 111, 210,
United States (US), 4, 11, 12, 23, 25, 296
34, 38, 43, 45, 47, 49, 50, Virus, 1–3, 44, 91, 117, 119–121,
52–54, 56–58, 82, 85, 88, 89, 123, 125, 128–136, 138,
91, 92, 106, 107, 119, 124, 136, 140–147, 149, 150, 241, 330,
138, 139, 144–146, 162, 166, 332, 333
169, 172–177, 183, 184, 206, Voluntary Guidelines, 179, 186,
244, 245, 252–254, 258, 265, 190–192
270, 288, 291–293, 303, 317, Voyager, 35
337, 343 VSV-EBOV, 140
Universal Postal Union (UPU), 39,
55, 85
W
UN Millennium Development Goal, War, 6, 37, 39, 41, 45, 50, 77, 78,
178, 185 120, 139, 224
UN Mission for Global Emergency Washington, DC, 43, 56
Response (UNMEER), 139 Waste, 17, 24, 45, 62, 63, 65, 68,
UN-REDD, 300 120, 165, 175, 206, 214, 249,
UN Security Council, 40, 54, 79, 80, 260, 264, 304, 305, 307, 308,
85, 88, 138–140 329
Unsustainable, 32, 166, 182, 192, Water flows, 206, 207, 216, 223, 329
226, 273, 293, 296, 333, 334 Watt, James, 33, 242
INDEX 369
Wellcome trust, 145 World Meteorological Organisation,

Westphalian, 37, 42, 131, 133, 134, 295
149, 150, 192, 233, 234, 272, World Power Conferences, 251, 252,
300, 316, 332 256, 271
Peace of Westphalia, 37 World time, 36, 59, 61–63, 65, 68,
Westphalian principles, 89, 192 69
Wetlands, 176, 205–207, 210, 217, World Trade Organisation (WTO),
287, 297 47, 58, 80, 88, 91, 103, 104,
Wet markets, 44, 128, 142 108, 169, 170, 177, 180, 192,
Whanganui River, 96, 99, 227, 235, 256, 285, 333
341, 345, 346 World Water Council, 84, 87, 105,
107, 212–214, 232, 330
Wildlife trade, 142, 143
World Water Forum, 107, 212, 213
Wind, 241, 248, 250, 254, 255, 266,
World Wide Fund (WWF), 164, 203,
268–270, 273, 336, 342
284, 295–297
wind energy, 18, 265, 268, 269 World wide web, 12, 51, 52
wind power, 246, 248, 249, 260, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C),
261, 265, 266, 270, 342 52
Wood, 241–243 WTO Agreement on Agriculture, 58
Workers’ Party, 185, 187 Wuhan, 2, 44, 142, 143
World Bank (WB), 40, 57, 88, 139,
145, 169, 170, 192, 221, 225,
244, 333 X
World economy, 9, 57 Xingu, 207, 209
World Energy Conferences, 251
World Energy Council, 251, 253, 256
Y
World Environment Organisation,
Yamuna river, 227, 229
285, 286, 317, 332
Yanomami, 311
World Food Board, 169
Yellow fever, 117, 119, 124
World Food Summit, 178, 179 Yersinia Pestis , 118
World government, 5, 78, 79, 82, 344
World Health Assembly (WHA), 107,
125 Z
World Health Organisation (WHO), Zero-carbon, 247, 260
39, 40, 50, 79, 82, 83, 86, 91, Zero Hunger, 16, 183, 185–187,
92, 104, 107, 108, 118, 120, 191, 192, 194, 195, 340, 341,
124–136, 138–140, 143–146, 345
148, 150, 166, 215, 233, 248, Zoonotic, 2, 120, 122, 127, 142, 147
285, 316, 330–332 Zurich, 56

Markus Fraundorfer - Global Governance in The Age of The Anthropocene-Springer (2022)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Markus Fraundorfer - Global Governance in The Age of The Anthropocene-Springer (2022)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Markus Fraundorfer - Global Governance in The Age of The Anthropocene-Springer (2022)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Global Governance

ISBN 978-3-030-88155-9 ISBN 978-3-030-88156-6 (eBook)

Cover illustration: Iuliia Bycheva/Alamy Stock Photo

2.3.3 The Political Economy of Global Governance 68

4.3.3 CASE STUDY 3: COVID-19—Global

6.3.1 Case Study 1: Transboundary Governance

8.2 The Global Environmental Governance Architecture 284

COICA Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organisations of the

IHRs International Health Regulations

PAHO Pan-American Health Organisation

VSV-EBOV Ebola Zaire Vaccine

Box 2.1 Geoengineering 28

You are drifting away from what was agreed to be real,

1.1 Planetary Challenges: Interconnected,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

outbreak was arguably a result of the global actions of many human

1.2 What Is Global Governance?

the broad variety of existing dynamics, processes and mechanisms at

economic dynamics, processes and actor constellations that shape, mould,

1.3 Expressions of the Anthropocene

threat that modern human societies have ever confronted. Unprecedented

These overwhelming figures give an idea of the unprecedented nature

1.4 Global Governance and the Anthropocene

developing effective global cooperation efforts to confront the planetary

Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator in the world (CERN

1.5 Organisation of the Book

freshwater governance, energy consumption and environmental protec-

NGOs, social movements, cities, companies, philanthropic foundations

Chapter 6 (Transboundary Water Governance) examines the archi-

energy sources have radically transformed human societies and exacer-

state-centric logic of global environmental governance to deal with these

Global Governance and the Anthropocene:

2.1 A Very Brief History of the Anthropocene

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

The epoch of geological time during which human activity is considered

2.1.1 The Geological Dimension

The arrival of Europeans in the Caribbean in 1492, and subsequent

Alternatively, the start of the Anthropocene can be pinned down to the

2.1.2 The Earth-System Dimension

to come. All these climatic changes rolling towards us with horrifying

In Jeremy Baskin’s view, this Earth-system perspective can lend itself

This universal interpretation of the Anthropocene and humanity’s respon-

Box 2.1: Geoengineering

2.1.3 The Civilisational Dimension

Box 2.2: The Great Oxygenation Event

actually means in this context. In his initial definition of the Anthro-

accumulation process by providing the fundamental assets capitalism is

countries (or empires) such as the Soviet Union, which participated in

The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft represent an intriguing

2.2 A Very Brief History of Global Governance

As the following sections outline, the roots of today’s global gover-

2.2.1 The Emergence of International and Transnational Authority

2.2.1.1 Shades of International Authority: States

In the context of the Congress system, European cities turned

Box 2.3: Europe’s Geography

One decade after the creation of the International Telegraph

economic liberalisation, human rights, democracy and ever closer coop-

Box 2.4: The Great Acceleration of International Authority

2.2.1.2 Shades of Transnational Authority: Cities, Social