Analysis of the effects of environmental treaties

环境条约的影响分析

• 批准号: 0318374
• 负责人: Ronald Mitchell
• 金额: $ 28.24万
• 依托单位: University of Oregon Eugene
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-09-01 至 2007-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0318374&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Analysis; effects; environmental; treaties

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.

为什么有些环境条约比其他条约执行得好得多？ 各国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，还有一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就全球环境变化和“向可持续性过渡”进行政策相关的决策支持研究的呼吁，确定了环境条约中可使现有和未来协定更加有效的特点。 它将分析一系列环境协定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定，有多少是由于其他因素;确定哪些协定有较大的影响，以及较小的影响;确定有多少特定的设计特征有助于协定的影响;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，将数十项环境协定的现有数据和新数据联系起来，目标成果以及这些成果的法律的、经济、政治和社会驱动因素的指标。 该项目将开发和测试回归模型，以区分协议的影响和其他解释因素，以便对解决不同环境问题的协议的影响进行有意义的比较，并评估“成功”的设计特点如何适用于其他问题。 由于大多数关于环境协定的先前研究都来自案例研究，因此，针对大量不同的协定开发和应用数据库和定量方法，为评估定性研究结果是否针对具体情况或是否可推广到其他情况提供了新的可能性，同时控制非协定因素的影响，并提供更大的信心，一个协议的影响如何比较其他人和非协议因素。 学者和从业人员将通过学术和政策导向的文章、一本书和一个网站了解项目数据库、编码和分析方法以及研究结果。 该研究将通过确认，扩展或反驳现有的关于环境协定是否，多少以及在什么条件下有助于环境保护的说法，扩展以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。 它将通过确定那些最有可能促进更好的绩效的设计特征以及非协议因素如何在某些情况下限制协议的影响，推动更好的环境协议的发展。 此外，公开这些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报告所述以外的问题。