International Law and Global Environmental Change

促进全球环境保护的国际协定在国际关系中日益突出。然而，人们对其有效性知之甚少，部分原因是当当事方的国家利益没有直接受到威胁时，很难适用关于执行和遵守的标准假设。这项研究将收集关于十个国家如何以及为什么签署五项环境协议，他们为实施这些协议所做的工作，以及他们是否遵守这些协议所规定的国际义务的基本数据。这些调查结果将涉及可能影响执行和遵守的一系列法律、社会、政治和经济因素。将审议的五项协定不仅涉及保护自然资源和污染等熟悉的主题，而且还涉及全球环境变化等更大的新主题，如臭氧消耗和可能的气候变化。对这些数据的分析将为我们理解国际协定在当代世界新情况下的有效性提供重要的理论贡献的经验基础。该项目将包括在所有十个国家进行实地工作和数据收集。将与该过程中的主要参与者进行访谈。该项目的目的是建立一个可供其他学者使用的数据库，以及为全球环境领域的政策团体提供指导所必需的知识。预期这一项目将成为发展一个在严格程度和知识方面可与军备控制研究相媲美的研究领域的基础。

International accords to advance the protection of the global environment are newly prominent in international relations. Little is known about their effectiveness, however, in part because standard assumptions about implementation and compliance are not easily applicable when the national interest of the parties is not directly at stake. This study will gather basic data about how and why ten countries entered into five environmental accords, what they have done to implement them, and whether they are complying with the international obligations created by these accords. These findings will be related to a set of legal, social, political and economic factors that are likely to affect implementation and compliance. The five accords to be considered address not only the familiar topics of conservation of natural resources and pollution but also the larger emerging topics of global environmental changes, such as ozone depletion and possible climate change. Analysis of these data will provide the empirical basis for an important theoretical contribution to our understanding of the effectiveness of international agreements in the new circumstances of the contemporary world. The project will include field work and data collection in all ten countries. Interviews will be conducted with key participants in the process. The project aims to create a data base to be used by other scholars as well as the knowledge necessary to provide guidance for policy communities in the global environmental field. It is anticipated that this project will be the basis for developing a field of study that is comparable in rigor and knowledge to the study of arms control.