Non-Governmental Actors in Global Environmental Politics: Businesses, NGOs, and Farmers
In this data set, I compile the information on ties between 12 Regional and Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and non-governmental actors of various types in the time period between 1998 and 2015. I measure tie-strength as non-governmental actors' attendance at annual meetings organized by the Secretariats that manage twelve environmental agreements.
Currently, these MEAs include 1) the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Specie (CITES), 2) the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, 3) the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, 4) the Convention on Biological Diversity, 5) the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, 6) the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, 7) the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, 8) Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, 9) the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, 10) the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, 11) the International Tropical Timber Agreement, and 12) the Agreement on the International Dolphin Conservation Program (AIDCP).
Two key take-away points of the data are as follows.
1) In the U.S. context, some MEAs such as CITES have disproportionately stronger ties with advocacy organizations than industry actors (i.e. labor unions or exporters) than other MEAs (i.e. UNFCCC) that have ties with diverse stakeholders.
2) Some MEAs have stronger ties to NGOs operating in developed countries (i.e. CITES), while others such as the ITTO and CBD are more equitably connected to NGOs in the Global South.
