More than 150 international environmental treaties have been adopted since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment first drew global attention to the dangers of transboundary pollution and rapid resource depletion. The elements of a makeshift international treaty-making system have been pieced together, but, according to the authors, it is woefully inadequate. The system as it stands, they say, tends to produce treaties that inevitably fall short of their overly ambitious objectives.

This book presents new ways of thinking about transboundary environmental negotiation by analyzing the weaknesses of the current environmental treaty-making system and outlining suggestions for new types of treaties. The eighteen chapters address the need for changes in attitudes, actors and treaty-making arrangements; identify a number of transboundary environmental problems that merit global attention and that could be negotiated more effectively with a new treaty-making system; and discuss ways of gauging whether the recommended approach to treaty making will be more effective.

Each chapter in this volume originally appeared in an issue of the annual PON series, Papers on International Environmental Negotiation, written by graduate students at MIT and at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The chapters represent the best of the decade-long series, and were selected because they reflect principles in environmental decision-making that the editors consider universal, adaptable, and well-tested -- applicable not just at the time they were written but also to the ongoing development of this field.