Analysis of the effects of environmental treaties

为什么有些环境条约比其他条约执行得好得多？各国已经谈判了数百项环境协定，有些解决了问题，有些影响有限或没有影响，有些仅仅由于偶然的情况而实现了目标。该项目响应了最近关于对全球环境变化和“向可持续性过渡”进行政策性决策支持研究的呼吁，确定了环境条约的特点，使现有和未来的协定更加有效。它将分析一系列环境协议所针对的环境质量和行为，以了解环境结果的变化有多少是由于相关协议造成的，有多少是由于其他因素造成的；确定哪些协议的影响更大，哪些影响更小；确定特定设计特征对协议效果的影响程度；并分析特定设计特征的好处如何取决于环境问题的特征、国际背景、所涉及的国家和其他因素。该项目将建立一个独特的元数据集，将几十项环境协议的现有数据和新数据联系起来，这些协议的目标成果以及这些成果的法律、经济、政治和社会驱动因素指标。该项目将开发和测试回归模型，旨在区分协议与其他解释因素的影响，允许对解决完全不同的环境问题的协议的影响进行有意义的比较，并评估“成功”设计特征对其他问题的普遍性。由于以前对环境协定的大多数研究都来自个案研究，因此开发和应用针对大量不同协定的数据库和定量方法，为评估定性结果是个案特有的还是可以推广到其他情况，控制非协定因素的影响，开辟了新的可能性。并提供更大的信心，将一项协议的效果与其他协议的效果以及非协议因素进行比较。学者和实践者将通过学术和政策导向的文章了解项目数据库、编码和分析方法以及研究结果；一本书;还有一个网站。该研究将通过确认、扩展或反驳现有的关于环境协议是否、在多大程度上以及在什么条件下有助于环境保护的主张，扩展先前关于制度效应的案例研究工作，从而推动学术进步。它将通过确定最有可能促进更好绩效的设计特点以及非协议因素如何在某些情况下限制协议的影响，推动制定更好的环境协定。此外，将方法和数据集公布于众将有助于其他学者、政府、条约秘书处和非政府组织调查本文讨论之外的问题。

Why do some environmental treaties perform so much better than others? Countries have negotiated hundreds of environmental agreements, some have resolved problems, some have had limited or no influence, and some have achieved their objectives simply due to fortuitous circumstances. This project responds to recent calls for policy-relevant, decision-support research on global environmental change and a "transition to sustainability" by identifying features of environmental treaties that can make both existing and future agreements more effective. It will analyze environmental quality and behaviors targeted by a range of environmental agreements to: understand how much of the variation in environmental outcomes is due to relevant agreements and how much is due to other factors; identify which agreements have greater, and lesser, effects; determine how much particular design features contribute to an agreement's effects; and analyze how the benefits of particular design features depend upon characteristics of the environmental problem, international context, countries involved, and other factors.The project will build a unique meta-dataset linking existing and new data on scores of environmental agreements, the outcomes they target and indicators of legal, economic, political, and social drivers of those outcomes. The project will develop and test regression models designed to distinguish effects of agreements from other explanatory factors, to allow meaningful comparison of the effects of agreements that address quite different environmental problems, and to evaluate how generalizable "successful" design features are to other problems. As most prior research on environmental agreements has derived from case studies, development and application of a database and quantitative methods addressed to a large and diverse set of agreements opens up new possibilities for assessing whether qualitative findings are case-specific or can be generalized to other cases, controlling for the effects of non-agreement factors, and providing greater confidence regarding how one agreement's effects compare to those of others and to non-agreement factors. Scholars and practitioners will be informed of the project database, coding and analysis methods, and findings through scholarly and policy-oriented articles; a book; and a website. The research will move scholarship forward by extending previous case study work on regime effects by confirming, extending, or refuting existing claims regarding whether, how much, and under what conditions environmental agreements contribute to environmental protection. It will move the development of better environmental agreements forward by identifying those design features most likely to promote better performance as well as how non-agreement factors may limit the influence of an agreement in certain contexts. In addition, making the methods and dataset publicly available will help other scholars, governments, treaty secretariats, and non-governmental organizations to investigate questions beyond those addressed here.