Chapter 7 assesses the overall findings of the book and provides outlooks and perspectives. The responses of international institutions to transformative novel technologies are mostly deficient in that they do not meaningfully contribute either to the realization of associated technological promises or to the avoidance of perils. Exceptions do exist, however, particularly where transformative novel technologies have a strong normative fit with pre-existing regulatory frameworks and can thus be assimilated by them with relative ease. The chapter also offers broader reflections on how to improve institutional responses to transformative novel technologies and then goes on to elaborate on some conceptual issues that have emerged in the previous discussion: from technology and path dependence to the role of the precautionary principle to the potential problem of ‘slippery slope’ effects in research and development. The chapter then tentatively discusses how the theoretical framework of this book would apply beyond the environmental domain. I conclude with some final considerations on the notion of ‘techno-fixes’ in the global politics of environmental sustainability.

Chapter 3 lays out the book’s central theory as well as the theory’s observable implications. It argues that powerful producers seek to use their privileged knowledge of the risks and benefits of their products (and regulators’ dependence on that knowledge) to systematically push their own out-of-patent products and those of generic sellers off the market via regulation, in favor of more expensive, patented alternatives. Producers accomplish this first by strategically revealing negative information about out-of-patent products as a means of convincing regulators that these products require stricter regulations. Second, producers support regulatory institutions that require existing products to be reevaluated under a precautionary standard, meaning that failure to prove an existing product is safe leads to the assumption it is dangerous. These precautionary institutions help innovative producers eliminate out-of-patent products more systematically, allowing them to acquire stricter standards not via the provision of damaging information, which carries some reputational risks, but through the withholding of favorable information. This chapter also lays out expectations for where we might expect these precautionary institutions to be adopted, given the distribution of preferences across countries, and it shows why such precautionary institutions should tend to be supported by developed countries and opposed by developing ones. Finally, the chapter argues that because international standard-setters ought to be susceptible to the same sorts of information problems as domestic regulators, and given the distribution of national power within these organizations, we can expect international standard-setters to replicate the precautionary institutional preferences of their wealthier members. We can additionally expect this to create the same tendency on the part of international standard-setters to arbitrarily impose stricter standards on more affordable products, despite the fact that this creates trade barriers that disadvantage poorer members and that directly conflict with these standard-setters’ stated mission.

Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the book. Motivating the book with examples of various regulatory barriers to agricultural trade that have proven particularly contentious, this chapter asks what might explain these barriers and whether we should expect current international solutions to resolve them. The chapter provides a brief overview of the book’s argument regarding how producers leverage private information to acquire the sorts of regulatory barriers that the opening examples describe. In addition, it previews the book’s main contribution and gives a brief chapter outline.

Chapter 5 takes a deep dive into the history of US agrochemical regulation in order to show that innovative companies were a major force behind the adoption of institutions that required the precautionary reevaluation of existing products, in opposition to generic producers who stood to lose out from such institutions. Using an original dataset that tracks changes to US agrochemical regulations over a two decade period, the chapter then provides evidence that in the wake of these institutions’ implementation, regulations have become stricter on older, less profitable products over time for reasons that cannot be attributed to health, safety, or obsolescence alone. In addition, the chapter provides evidence that the mechanism behind this outcome is not the political power of producers but rather their ability to leverage their information advantages under a regulatory regime in which products are subject to precautionary reevaluations.

This chapter addresses the relevance of the peacetime qualification of some groups of animals as ‘endangered species’ in situations of armed conflict, both international and non-international. The chapter first gives an overview of the lex lata on endangered animal species in international environmental law. It discusses a number of options to enhance the protection of ‘endangered species’ in situations of armed conflict. By way of interpretation and by way of analogy, the rationale of peacetime protection of ‘endangered species’ can be integrated into international humanitarian law. The chapter finally argues that the protection of ‘endangered species’ in situations of armed conflict can be improved by a protection similar to specially protected objects such as cultural objects and livestock.

Chapter 4 explains the relevant rules of armed conflict that provide for the protection against the effects of hostilities. To the extent that humanitarian law protects civilians and civilian objects, it also protects foreign investors and their investments, as far as natural persons and tangible assets are concerned. The chapter shows how the law of armed conflict balances military and humanitarian concerns and illuminates the operation of the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution. In analysing the limitations of this protection, the chapter further identifies circumstances in which harm to foreign investors and their investments may be lawful under international humanitarian law. In particular, the chapter shows how foreign investments can easily become military targets and under which circumstances inflicted damage can be an acceptable side effect of military operations. The chapter thus forms the basis for the subsequent examination of international humanitarian law’s impact on individual investment treaty standards.

Types of interaction, reduction of contraceptive efficacy, reduction of disease therapy efficacy, guidelines

This chapter – the concluding substantive chapter of the book – asks how a concern with ecosystem resilience might ultimately come to inform the way political communities approach the relationship between climate change and security. If ecological security constitutes the most progressive account of climate security, encouraging approaches that emphasize the rights and needs of the most vulnerable in the face of climate change, how might we get there? The chapter draws on the political sociology of Pierre Bourdieu in developing an account of political possibility. It then locates immanent possibilities for movement towards ecological security in existing principles and practices (from the precautionary principle to accounts of geoengineering governance), before acknowledging a role for considering alternative and novel sets of institutional arrangements and practices to advance ecological security. In the process, it makes the case for recognizing and facilitating progressive change, even if such change does not wholly align with the principles of the ecological security discourse. In this context, the perfect should not be the enemy of the good.

Chapter 7 explores the further strengthening and consolidation of the international environmental norm as well as contestation around it, from the 1990s until the early twenty-first century. In the first section, I explore how global environmental protection has been further embedded in international policy-making and cooperation. This process involved the inclusion of ever more issues in the international environmental agenda; the insertion of green norms into other international policy areas and regimes, most notably those concerned with economic affairs; and a strengthening and broadening of the institutional architecture for global environmental protection. None of these shifts in international practices and norms were uncontroversial or easy to achieve, they were the result of ongoing battles over how to put environmental stewardship into practice. Indeed, the second section of this chapter will discuss in more detail the ongoing normative contestation over global environmentalism. I conclude the chapter with a review of how environmental stewardship fits in with other primary institutions of global international society.

Because of its transboundary effects and because states will be the primary actors, large-scale solar geoengineering and its governance are matters of international law. This is the first of four chapters that consider rules from custom, treaty, and principles as well as international organizations. Although there are no international instruments that are legally binding, in force, and specific to solar geoengineering, international law provides both a substantial extant governance framework and a foundation upon which future norms, rules, procedures, and institutions specific to solar geoengineering could be built. This chapter introduces how international law operates and discusses several general international legal principles that would guide its interpretation and development with respect to solar geoengineering. It describes one source of binding international law – that of states’ customary behavior – and what it might mean for solar geoengineering, emphasizing procedural obligations. The chapter reviews some relevant nonbinding multilateral environmental agreements and activities of intergovernmental organizations, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.