Global governance
[1] The number of actors (whether they be states, non-governmental organizations, firms, and epistemic communities) who are involved in governance relationships has also increased substantially.
[6] Stronger international cooperation is needed to tackle the interconnected global governance challenges such as health, trade, and the environment.
Governance denotes a process through which institutions coordinate and control independent social relations, and that have the ability to enforce their decisions.
[10] The definition is flexible in scope, applying to general subjects such as global security or to specific documents and agreements such as the World Health Organization's Code on the Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes.
For these authors, global governance is better understood as an analytical concept or optic that provides a specific perspective on world politics different from that of conventional international relations[13] theory.
[15] Other authors conceptualized global governance as a field of practice in which diverse stakeholders, such as public, private, and supra-governmental actors can compete for influence about issues that are not bound to national boundaries.
[16] This conceptualization allows to better understand the principles of exclusions of specific stakeholders from the negotiation field as some actors lack the economic, social, cultural and symbolic resources required to gain enough influence.
Among thinkers who made major contributions to the period discussions on the goals and forms of international governance and policy coordination were J.M.
[21] The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of a long period of international history based on a policy of balance of powers.
The national-security model, for example, while still in place for most governments, is gradually giving way to an emerging collective conscience that extends beyond the restricted framework it represents.
Even earlier examples of global goal-setting include the "Plan of Action of the 1990 World Summit for Children" and the "first Development Decade that dates as far back as 1961".
However, results from a meta-analysis found that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) had so far (as of 2023) failed to integrate the system of global governance and to bring international organizations together.
[29]One of the SDGs, Sustainable Development Goal 16 on "peace, justice and strong institutions", has a target and indicator regarding global governance (to be achieved by 2030).
[35] International bureaucracies can work as orchestrators that interact with non-state actors, such as civil society groups, non-profit entities, or the private sector.
[26]: 9–14 Global governance for sustainability is highly fragmented, consisting of many international organizations, states, and other actors working in separate clusters.
Proposed reforms include clustering institutions, embracing complexity, or centralizing global sustainability governance under strong coordinating authorities.
It occurs when multiple public and private institutions operate in the same policy area, leading to overlapping responsibilities and potential inefficiencies.
Instead, institutions have become more isolated, forming silos around their specific SDG issues and around the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.
[37] Others have argued for modifying existing decision-making procedures and institutional boundaries in order to enhance their effectiveness instead of creating new—likely dysfunctional—overarching frameworks.
[36] For example, they have said that instead of creating a WEO to safeguard the environment, environmental issues should be directly incorporated into the World Trade Organization (WTO).
[38] Some academics also argue that multiple institutions and some degree of overlap and duplication in policies is necessary to ensure maximum output from the system.
Political scientists have said that structural changes in global environmental governance are urgently needed both within and outside United Nations (UN) institutions.
[35] Until now, the formulation of environmental policies at the international level has been divided by theme, sector or territory, resulting in treaties that overlap or clash.
However, building effective collective mechanisms to govern impacts on the climate system at the planetary level presents particular challenges, e.g. the complexity of the relevant science and the progressive refinement of scientific knowledge about our global climate and planetary systems, and the challenge of communicating this knowledge to the general public and to policy makers.
There is also the urgency of addressing this issue; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has underlined that the international community has a narrow window of opportunity to act to keep global temperature rise at safe levels.
Since that time, the use of chlorofluorocarbons (industrial refrigerants and aerosols) and farming fungicides such as methyl bromide has mostly been eliminated, although other damaging gases are still in use.
Global health governance gives new roles for both non-state and state actors, in areas such as agenda setting, resource mobilization and allocation, and dispute settlement.
[57] These changing roles have generated new kinds of partnerships such as the global campaign against the marketing of breast milk substitutes: collaboration between UNICEF, WHO, the International Baby Food Action Network, and other like-minded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) came together to address this issue.
