SPEAKING
FREELY Woeful governance for global
issues By Hossein Aghaie
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International
migration and global environmental change pose
formidable challenges to development and are
widely viewed by many social scientists as
inescapable corollary of rapid globalization. It
is predicted that by 2050, between 50 to almost
700 million people will be forced to migrate due
to the adverse effects of climate change. [1]
Moreover, over the past half century, migration
flows from the developing to developed countries
have grown exponentially, and
"environmentally-induced migration (EIM)" accounts
for a large part of the exodus. [2]
What
merits attention here is that irrespective of what
kind of
decisions are made at the
state, regional or global levels, the nature of
relations between developing and developed nations
will have profound implications on how the United
Nations meets its Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs). Put differently, the development of
nations is intimately tied to the ways in which
certain patterns of decision-making are configured
in dealing with migration and global warming.
Obstacles and opportunities A
growing body of research in the area of
environmental policies indicates that the majority
of decisions at international negotiations, from
the negotiations of the 1992 United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
through to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and up to the
2011 Doha Summit were made by the states. As
Bulkeley and Newell argue, "Key decisions about
overall targets and the means of delivering them
continue to be made at the international level by
nation-states operation within global
institutions." [3] The irony, however, is that it
was precisely because of "the rise of
environment-oriented civil society associations"
and NGOs that the world's population became more
aware of the hazards of global warming in the
first place. [4]
For instance, the success
of the UN Environment Program (UNEP) and the World
Meteorological Organization (WMO) in carving out
an international ozone regime in 1987 was to a
large extent attributable to active collaboration
of transnational epistemic communities. [5] An
intriguing question arises, then, as to why
non-state actors play second fiddle to
nation-states during decision-making stages
despite the proliferation of their engagement in
intergovernmental organizations in general and in
climate talks in particular?
In fact,
almost none of the recommendations and policy
initiatives introduced by the epistemic
communities and sub-state actors have been legally
binding in the UN climate conferences. Scholars
highlight the "institutional factors such as rules
of procedures and informal practices, as well as
power considerations by individual states" to
uncover the causes of this anomaly. [6]
Put succinctly, the influence of the US
and China as the biggest producers of
greenhouse-gas emissions outweighs in practice the
soft power exercised by networks of knowledge such
as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) which have been the vanguards of public
awareness since the very first COP1 in 1995.
In this setting, it seems justifiable to
argue that neo-liberal and state-centric doctrines
undergirding the present monolithic and top-down
global governance of climate change not only fail
to appreciate the leading role of non-state actors
in putting the environment-related issues high on
agenda, but also impair the legitimacy of actions
taken by individual states. Thus, an integral
component of an efficient global management of
environmental change is to enhance the democratic
legitimacy of global governance by focusing on
creating the conditions for NGOs and non-state
actors to seek accountability and transparency
from international organizations and to influence
domestic debates about climate change.
The
challenges are daunting, as new evidence suggests
that there is a link, albeit somewhat indirect,
between climate-related disasters and the outbreak
of armed civil conflicts. [7] This bears testimony
to the fact that the scope and scale of the
consequences of climate change are very broad. As
the UN strives to achieve the stated goal of
limiting the world's average temperature increase
to 2ฐ Celsius, there is a fundamental need for the
developed countries to feel the rising heat of
civil societies' actions and for the civil society
association, likewise, to become united in their
approach.
The migration
conundrum International migration
scholarship provides an exhaustive list of issue
areas ranging from establishing a framework for
authorized labor migration and social integration
of migrants to securing the rights of refugees and
asylum seekers. Over the past decade immigration
has become a focal point of public scrutiny and
has become increasingly politicized and
securitized essentially because of the potential
impacts of human mobility on economic growth and
social development.
Of particular note is
that the global governance of international
migration remains weak and underdeveloped despite
numerous initiatives taken at the international
level, such as the launching of Global Commission
on International Migration (GCIM) in 2003, which
was the first global attempt to construct a
unified and coherent governance approach. [8]
However, widespread attempts to reach global
consensus on global governance of migration have
proven elusive, according to the International
Organization for Migration (IOM). [9]
Further to this, it is important to bear
in mind that one of the major obstacles to
achieving a global migratory policy is interlinked
with the divergence of interest among
nation-states. In other words, the interests of
states have increasingly diverged on the question
of who can have the right to citizenship.
Moreover, unlike the issue of climate change,
there is no global consensus regarding the merits
and demerits of trans-national migration. This is
simply because different states have different
sets of priorities, and this will inevitably make
the process of reaching compromise and consensus
even more costly to international organizations
and other relevant stakeholders.
Recent
years have also seen a substantial growth in
bilateral agreements on migration. Nevertheless,
some scholars contend that viewing the issue of
migration through the prism of "nuanced bilateral
relations" will shift the states' attention away
from addressing the salient issue of protecting
the rights of migrants toward adopting more
security-oriented approaches. [10] In the European
Union, for example, a similar problem manifests
itself by the dominance of a "bifurcated, or
dualized system for the regulation and handling of
migration". [11]
The conundrum facing the
EU nowadays is how to strike a balance between
security considerations in the form of combating
illegal migration and maintaining growth-oriented
migration policies that focus primarily on labor
mobility. The solution to this complex puzzle lies
partially with the capacity and willingness of
various governance networks, including non-state
actors to chalk out a comprehensive strategy aimed
at enhancing global democracy in the sphere of
immigration.
What is particularly
interesting is that in international migration
management, in contrast to climate governance,
civil societies are considered at best peripheral
actors. The crux of the argument is that
immigration has become increasingly associated
with "high politics" due to the fact that the
states often times recourse to national security
paradigms to analyze and respond to the issue.
[12]
Such state-centric approaches
constitute one of the biggest challenges to
collective efforts made by civil society
associations as well as international migration
organizations such as the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the
International Centre for Migration Policy
Development (ICMPD) and the IOM.
In this
context, one can argue that non-state actors, in
particular, can make the most use of their
potentials in the sphere of migration to help
states in the process of agenda-setting and try to
fill the gaps between the public experience and
politics by reminding policy makers that the rule
of law and protection of human rights are of
paramount importance. The plight of forced labor
migrants, especially many women who work in the
labor-incentive manufacturing sectors may be a
case in point. Active engagement by civil
societies and even private authorities will do a
lot in ensuring that the thrust of neo-liberalism
would not erode the social and human rights of
migrants, particularly the third-country nationals
(TCNs).
In sum, there is no grand theory
to explain global migration, although various
theoretical perspectives, such as migration
system, network theory, push/pull theories of
economic migration, world system theory and
historical/structural approaches have been offered
to deal with the changing patterns of migration.
But one thing is ringingly clear: there has never
been a time in history when the challenges of
global migration and the threat of climate change
were so inextricably intertwined, and that never
in the history of the two disciplines has there
been such pressing need for a well-coordinated and
multi-level system of governance to address these
issues in an efficient, transparent and legitimate
manner.
Notes: 1. Warner,
Koko. "Global Environmental Change and Migration:
Governance Challenges." Global Environmental
Change 20.3 (2010), p. 402. 2. Ibid. 3.
Bulkeley, Harriet, and Peter Newell. Governing
Climate Change. London: Routledge, 2010, p.
105. 4. Karns, Margaret P., and Karen A.
Mingst. International Organizations: The Politics
and Processes of Global Governance. Boulder, CO:
Lynne Rienner, 2004, p. 503. 5. Rittberger,
Volker, Bernhard Zangl, and Andreas Kruck.
International Organization, Basingstoke,
Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, p.
231. 6. Nasiritousi, Naghmeh, Mattias Hjerpe,
and Bj๖rn Linner. "The Politics of Non-State Actor
Involvement in the International Climate Change."
(2011), Center for Climate Science and Policy
Research, Link๖ping University, Web. 12 Jan. 2013,
p. 17. 7. Bergholt, D., & Lujala, P.
(2012)."Climate-Related Natural Disasters,
Economic Growth, and Armed Civil Conflict",
Journal Of Peace Research, Vol. 49, No. 1, p.
147. 8. Munck, Ronaldo. "Globalization,
Governance and Migration: An Introduction." Third
World Quarterly, Vol.29, No. 7, (2008), p.
1227. 9. Ibid. 10. Yuko, Hamada. "Global
Governance And International Migration: A Bridge
Too Far?." (2012): OAIster, p. 518, Web. 17 Jan.
2013 at
http://www2.gsid.nagoya-u.ac.jp/blog/anda/files/2012/01/15_yuko-hamada1.pdf
11. Hansen, Peo, and Sandy Brian. Hager. The
Politics of European Citizenship: Deepening
Contradictions in Social Rights and Migration
Policy. New York: Berghahn, 2010, p. 49. 12.
Meissner, Doris M. International Migration
Challenges in a New Era: Policy Perspectives and
Priorities for Europe, Japan, North America and
the International Community : A Report to the
Trilateral Commission. New York: Trilateral
Commission, 1993, p. xii.
Hossein
Aghaie is a Master's student at Link๖ping
University in Sweden, majoring in international
and European Relations.
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
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