U.S.-Latin America Dissertation Enhancement: The Impact of Global Environmental Agreements on Biodiversity Policy in Bolivia and Costa Rica

9603023 Press This America Program奖将资助加州大学圣克鲁斯分校保罗·斯坦伯格在丹尼尔·普莱斯博士的监督下进行的学位论文增强项目。他们将与哥斯达黎加大学可持续发展研究中心主任Carlos Quesada-Mateo博士合作，并在玻利维亚与圣克鲁斯自主莫雷诺大学的Kathy Mihotek教授合作。该研究项目将分析玻利维亚和哥斯达黎加在过去25年中物种保护工作的轨迹，以探索国际保护协议对国家政策的影响程度和方式。具体地说，他们将检验两个假设。首先，看看国际协议是否促进了哥斯达黎加和玻利维亚关于物种保护的文化价值观的变化，其次，找出国际协议是否促使国家保护政策同时发生变化。虽然关于制定国际环境条约的文献很多，而且还在不断增加，但关于条约及其相关组织对发展中国家国家政策的影响的学术关注却很少。这项研究的成功完成将揭示保护制度如何更有目的地工作，以促进文化价值向制度目标的转变，以及国际制度如何利用国内倡导专家网络来促进制度目标。这一结果应该对当前国际环境制度对国家和次国家行为的有效性的研究计划的进展做出实质性贡献。这项工作有可能大大提高我们研究政策专家和国际条约谈判者网络如何影响脱离其直接主权地区的实地情况的能力。***

9603023 Press This Americas Program award will fund a dissertation enhancement project for Paul Steinberg, University of California, Santa Cruz, under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Press. They will be working with Dr. Carlos Quesada-Mateo, Director of the Center for Research on Sustainable Development, University of Costa Rica, and in Bolivia with Professor Kathy Mihotek, Universidad Autonoma Moreno, Santa Cruz. The research project will analyze the trajectory of species preservation efforts in Bolivia and Costa Rica over the past twenty-five years, to explore to what extent international conservation agreements have influenced national policies, and by what means. Specifically, they will test two hypotheses. First, to see if international agreements have catalyzed changes in cultural values regarding species preservation in Costa Rica and Bolivia, and, secondly, find out if the international agreements have precipitated concurrent changes in national conservation policies. While there exists a large and growing literature on international environmental treaty making, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the impact of treaties and their associated organizations on national policies in developing countries. Successful conclusion of this research will shed light on how conservation regimes can work more intentionally to foster cultural value shifts toward regime goals, and how international regimes can use networks of domestic advocacy-oriented experts to facilitate regime goals. The results should make a substantial contribution to the progress of the current research program in the effectiveness of international environmental regimes on state and substate behavior. The work has the potential to make a major advance in our capacity for studying how networks of policy experts and the negotiators of international treaties can affect conditions on the ground in places removed from their direct sovereignty. ***