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When former American Secretary of State Dean Acheson completed his memoirs, he titled them "Present at the Creation." Despite this grandiosity, Acheson was referring not to the original, cosmological Genesis, but rather to the era in which the world's great multilateral institutions were created, including the United Nations (UN). We must hope that the statesmen of our own time will record achievements of similar magnitude, for the current system of global governance is woefully inadequate to meet the challenges of this century. Nowhere is this inadequacy more evident than with respect to environmental issues, including climate change and energy. These challenges are so complex, so grave, and so urgent that a single form or layer of governance cannot be expected to meet them with any adequacy. What is needed is a multidimensional approach to global environmental governance.

The current environmental governance system is a haphazard patchwork of multilateral institutions and agreements that awkwardly and incompletely overlap with regional and national efforts. Major actors include the UN Environment Program (UNEP), national governments, multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), and a range of nongovernmental organizations. As governance scholars James Broughton and Colin Bradford have written, such a "multiplicity of actors" results in a "wide divergence of objectives and interests." Moreover, a tension between developing nations, which call for sustainable economic development, and the developed world, which seeks to emphasize environmental protection, hampers consensus, particularly on climate issues. With 97% of global emissions growth predicted to come from developing nations, this discord bodes ill for the planet.

Sadly, this chaotic picture is likely to persist through 2020. A new climate change agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol is likely to create new UN institutions to aid in climate change adaptation and technology transfer. But there is no sign of fundamental change in the governance of the global environment. In consequence, whatever new institutions a new agreement may produce, they are unlikely to meet the full range of global environmental challenges, which apart from climate change also include oceanic ecosystem collapse and catastrophic loss of biodiversity. On present evidence, the world in 2020 will simply have an enhanced complement of inadequate environmental governance institutions and frameworks.

Against this dismal prospect stands the promise of multidimensional environmental governance. This framework assigns to global, national, and sub-national institutions a variety of responsibilities to ensure that the full scope of global environmental challenges is addressed. At the global level, critical ecosystems, including rainforests, biologically productive ocean regions, and the climate itself, should be designated as being vital to humanity as a whole. With UN leadership, international resources including aid and technical cooperation should be devoted to ensuring economic development is pursued without compromising these crucial ecosystems. At the same time, a UN Environmental Organization (UNEO) should be formed as the successor to UNEP in order to better supervise the myriad number of MEAs and build capacity within national governments to deal with environmental change, as suggested by the UN General Assembly. Finally, sub-national partnerships should be encouraged to develop innovative and locally relevant environmental policy solutions. One notable example is the US-China EcoPartnerships initiative, which includes an agreement between Shanghai and New Orleans to preserve coastal ecosystems in both cities. Such local partnerships encourage policy entrepreneurship, while also side-stepping the contentious politics of bilateral and multilateral environmental agreements.

Multidimensional environmental governance thus creates a robust and coherent framework to address global environmental issues at multiple levels. Realizing this framework will require progress on two fronts. The first is a commitment by the United States and the European Union to increasing the budgets of multilateral environmental institutions, and financial support for sub-national partnerships. Global civil society can play a crucial role in pressuring governments to do so. In addition, tensions between the developed and developing world must be reduced through revision of the inequitable global trade regime, plus measures to ease the financial crisis. Indeed, multidimensional environmental governance can be envisioned as merely one component of reform of the entire system of global governance, which makes developing nations equal stakeholders in global affairs. A multidimensional approach to global environmental governance is humanity's opportunity to create our own era of common effort and responsibility, equal to the environmental challenges we face.

Scott Michael Moore is a recent graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is currently studying Chinese environmental policy as a Fulbright Fellow with the Environmental Economics and Policy Study Group at Peking University.

This article has been shortlisted for the Atlantic Community's "Global Governance in 2020" student competition.

The Atlantic Community's World Economic Forum Focus Week (Jan 22 - Jan 28)
This article is part of the Atlantic Community's World Economic Forum focus week in a 5 day run-up to the WEF Davos Conference (conference begins Wed 28 January). We are focusing on two of the most pressing aspects of the conference: the Global Economy and Climate Change.

Other articles in our series on WEF:

• Yam Ki Chan: Unipolarity's Days are Numbered
• Jordan Levine: Socioecological Innovation: an Alternative Future
• Scott Edward Hartley: Political Liberalism at the Heart of International Trade
• Sam Vanderslott: Action on Climate Change Requires Global Technology Transfer
• Alyssa M. Ramsey: Human Rights: A Matter of Guiding the Invisible Hand
• Scott Michael Moore: A Multidimensional Approach for a Planet in Peril
• Dr. Luke Nichter: Redefining the IMF
  

From the discussion on the community page we will generate a special Atlantic Memo that will be distributed to WEF organizers and to decision makers worldwide at the start of the conference. Please share your comments on the recommendations and issues raised in this article. We want to know how you think the WEF Davos Conference should approach the climate change challenge.