Analysis of the effects of environmental treaties

为什么有些环境条约的效果比其他的要好得多？各国通过谈判达成了数百项环境协定，有些解决了问题，有些影响有限或没有影响，有些仅仅是由于偶然情况而实现了目标。该项目响应了最近关于全球环境变化的与政策相关的决策支持研究和“向可持续性过渡”的呼吁，确定了可使现有和未来协定更有效的环境条约的特点。它将分析一系列环境协议所针对的环境质量和行为，以：了解环境结果中有多少差异是由相关协议造成的，有多少是由其他因素造成的；确定哪些协议的影响更大，哪些协议的影响更小；确定特定的设计功能对协议的影响有多大；分析特定设计功能的好处如何取决于环境问题的特征、国际背景、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，将数十项环境协议、它们针对的结果以及这些结果的法律、经济、政治和社会驱动因素的指标的现有数据和新数据连接起来。该项目将开发和测试回归模型，旨在将协议的影响与其他解释因素区分开来，以便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”的设计特征对其他问题的普遍性程度。由于大多数以前关于环境协议的研究都是从案例研究中衍生出来的，针对一大批不同协议的数据库和量化方法的开发和应用为评估定性结论是针对具体案例还是可以推广到其他案例开辟了新的可能性，控制了非协议因素的影响，并对一项协议的影响如何与其他和非协议因素进行比较提供了更大的信心。将通过学术文章和面向政策的文章、一本书和一个网站，向学者和从业人员通报项目数据库、编码和分析方法以及调查结果。这项研究将通过确认、扩展或驳斥现有的关于环境协议是否有助于环境保护、在多大程度上以及在什么条件下有助于环境保护的现有主张，来扩展先前关于制度影响的案例研究工作，从而推动学术研究向前发展。它将通过查明最有可能促进更好的业绩的设计特点以及非协定因素如何在某些情况下限制协定的影响，来推动更好的环境协定的发展。此外，公开提供方法和数据集将有助于其他学者、政府、条约秘书处和非政府组织调查本文所述问题以外的问题。

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.