Public-Private Partnerships for the Earth Politics and ...

Public-Private Partnerships for the Earth Politics and Patterns of Hybrid Authority in the Multilateral System Liliana B. Andonova Global Environmental Politics, Volume 10, Number 2, May 2010, pp. 25-53 (Article) Published by The MIT Press

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Public-Private Partnerships for the Earth

Liliana B. Andonova

Research Articles Public-Private Partnerships for the Earth: Politics and Patterns of Hybrid Authority in the Multilateral System •

Liliana B. Andonova*

Introduction Over the last 15 years, the number of global public-private partnerships (PPPs) for the environment has grown exponentially. The World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 has stimulated the registration of over 400 PPPs as ofªcial Type II outcomes of the Conference. The United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) has facilitated over 150 environmental partnerships between United Nations (UN) organizations, states, and nonstate actors in the period 1998–2008. Through its Small Grants Program, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) has supported over 10,000 partnerships with NGOs and local communities between 1992 and 2009. Virtually all major international organizations (IOs) working on the environment, such as the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the World Bank, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), the United Nations Educational, Scientiªc and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO), and others, have extensive partnership programs. Public-private partnerships can be deªned as agreements for collaborative governance between public actors (national governmental agencies, subnational governments, or IOs) and nonstate actors (foundations, ªrms, advocacy organizations, or others),1 which establish common norms, rules, objec* The research presented in this article was supported by the Jean Monnet Fellowship Program and the Robert Schuman Center of the European University Institute for which I am much obliged. I am also grateful to the many colleagues, experts and policy practitioners who shared their experience and insights on partnerships; as well as to Daniela Andreevska and Stephanie Dornschneider for research assistance. The interpretation of materials and data gathered is, of course, the sole responsibility of the author. 1. “Private” in the context of “public-private partnership” refers to all nonstate actors. Global Environmental Politics 10:2, May 2010 © 2010 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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tives, and decision-making and implementation procedures for a set of policy problems. PPPs thus involve the institutionalization of hybrid authority at the international arena, beyond traditional forms of interaction between state and nonstate actors such as lobbying, consultation, or subcontracting. The rise of hybrid authority raises fascinating questions about the evolving role of states, nonstate actors, and IOs in global environmental governance. What political factors drive this institutional diversiªcation? Do partnerships undermine the authority of intergovernmental and state institutions? Why is the environmental arena particularly conducive to collaborative governance? What are the resulting patterns of PPPs and how do they contribute to sustainability? To address these questions, the paper examines the politics and patterns of PPPs for the environment in the multilateral system.2 It argues that two kinds of dynamics contribute to the hybridization of environmental governance at that level. On one hand, the fragmentation of environmental regimes and the parallel growth of nonstate actors have, over time, resulted in structural pressures and opportunities for public-private collaboration. On the other hand, and more signiªcantly, IOs have responded to the pluralization of global environmental politics selectively and acted as entrepreneurs to facilitate collaboration with nonstate actors within their spheres of expertise. As a consequence of these dynamics, PPPs represent neither a substantial “powershift” from established institutions as some scholars suggest,3 nor are partnerships marginal phenomena as the limited number of studies might imply.4 PPPs are organizational innovations intended to reinvent the intergovernmental system, rather than to reorganize it fundamentally. They complement the functions of intergovernmental institutions by creating numerous niches for incremental, outcome-oriented collective action, while at the same time linking them to the transnational sphere of governance. To substantiate the argument of PPPs as outcomes of agency entrepreneurship under external pressures and opportunities, this article ªrst situates the study in the broader literature on environmental regimes, private authority, and the structure of global environmental politics. It then uses a principal-agent perspective of IOs to specify the conditions for entrepreneurship of PPPs. The theoretical propositions inform the comparative analysis of three “meta” partnership programs in the multilateral system: the GEF Small Grants Program, the Prototype Carbon Fund, and the environmental portfolio of the UNFIP. The conclusion discusses the impact of PPPs on the structure and outcomes of global environmental governance. 2. Hereafter, the term “partnership” when used alone is used as shorthand for “public-private partnership.” The paper is concerned with the emergence, patterns, and role of hybrid authority in global environment politics. It therefore does not focus on multi-sector non-governmental partnerships, which fall largely in the realm of private authority as discussed later in the literature review section. For a discussion of multi-sector partnerships, both non-governmental and hybrid, see Glasbergen et al. 2007; and Witte et al. 2003. 3. Mathews 1997; Ottaway 2001; and Utting 2000. 4. Börzel and Risse 2005.

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International Regimes, Private Authority, and Public-Private Partnerships Global environmental governance used to be studied as essentially an intergovernmental affair. During the second half of the twentieth century, the number of international environmental agreements increased almost ten-fold.5 Not surprisingly, the literature on environmental cooperation of the 1980s and 1990s focused primarily on intergovernmental regimes: their formation, functions, and roles in facilitating and enforcing contracts, as well as in knowledge diffusion, framing of discourses, and upholding of norms.6 Studies of the implementation and effectiveness of environmental agreements added another layer of analysis, revealing a picture of interplay between international and domestic politics, variable impacts, and institutional fragmentation and overlap.7 Despite the preoccupation of international relations theories with the state, however, the environmental politics literature was quick to recognize the growing inºuence of nonstate actors. While nonstate actors were initially studied as pressure groups targeting states, international institutions, corporations, and public opinion,8 attention gradually shifted to the rise of private authority.9 The analytical interest in private authority was again a swift reºection of the growth since the 1990s in the number, variety, and reach of nonstate mechanisms for environmental governance. Private systems of governance are typically deªned as those established and managed primarily by and for nonstate actors without a necessary intermediation of the state.10 Nonstate governance systems can derive governance authority from their capacity to introduce environmental information in the chain of production and consumption in speciªc markets, from the moral authority and norms promoted by advocacy organizations, or a combination of moral and market authority.11 Public-private partnerships occupy a middle ground in the increasingly complex continuum between public and private environmental governance.12 Despite the interplays and overlaps along this continuum,13 however, PPPs cannot be interpreted simply as another form of private authority or the “privatization” of the multilateral system. Several characteristics distinguish PPPs from 5. Mitchell 2003. 6. For an overview, see Mitchell 2002; and Young 1997. See also Haas, Keohane, and Levy 1993, which inspired the title of this article. 7. For an overview of environmental institutions and their effects on domestic politics, see Andonova 2004; Miles et al. 2002; Young 1999; and Victor et al. 1998. 8. Keck and Sikkink 1998; Princen and Finger 1994; Wapner 1996; and Fox and Brown 1998. 9. Cashore et al. 2004; Clapp 2005; Garcia-Johnson 2000; Hauºer 2000; Pattberg 2008; and Prakash and Potoski 2006. 10. Clapp 2005; Cashore et al. 2004; and Levy and Newell 2005. 11. Cashore et al. 2004; and Hall and Biersteker 2002. 12. Andonova, Betsill and Bulkeley 2009; Börzel and Risse 2005; and Biermann and Pattberg 2008. 13. The ISO14000 series for environmental management, for example, is embedded in the structures of the International Organization for Standardization, a body which represents both governmental and non-governmental organizations. ISO14000, however, has been analyzed primarily as private governance (rather than a public-private partnership), because its construction has been dominated by and it has targeted the behavior of private actors (Clapp 2005; and Prakash and Potoski 2006).

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traditional intergovernmental institutions on one hand, and private governance on the other. Intergovernmental institutions operate with legal authority delegated by states and are structured hierarchically with implementation authority running through IOs, domestic legislators, and bureaucracies. PPPs are typically based on soft agreements not carrying the force of international law, and are structured around decentralized networks with low level of bureaucratization. The voluntary network structure of PPPs makes them a part of a broader phenomenon of transnational network-based governance, which also includes largely private networks.14 However, PPPs are distinct from private governance in that they involve the deliberate pooling of authority, competences, and resources from both the public and private spheres. The governance authority of PPPs is negotiated across the two spheres, rather than granted through delegation, market mechanisms, or moral recognition. As a consequence, their authority and legitimacy is more readily subject to contestation and renegotiation.15 Compared to the extensive focus on intergovernmental regimes and burgeoning literature on private authority, the study of PPPs as a mode of global governance remains fragmented theoretically and empirically.16 Some have interpreted partnerships as a “powershift” away from the state or as a corporatist capture of international institutions.17 Scholars of globalization in turn have hailed partnerships and other global governance networks as the new mechanisms, emerging to address global governance deªcits and redress the gaps of participation, fairness, ªnancing, performance, or legitimacy in the multilateral system. Globalization scholars present partnerships as a marriage of necessity between an intergovernmental system in stress and a potent transnational sector in order to deliver neglected public goods and to tame globalization.18 Such structural-functional explanations of the rise of PPPs have contributed to the literature by highlighting the pluralization of international politics and by detailing a variety of functions partnerships can provide. Structural explanations of PPPs are insufªcient, however, as they bypass the politics of institutional diversiªcation and tell us little about the variation in the clustering and impact of PPPs across governance arenas. While a survey by Kaul shows that global PPPs cluster disproportionately around environmental and health issues,19 we lack explanations as to why this might be the case, while other equally pressing and pluralized spheres of global governance have attracted modest or no partnership activity. Within the environmental arena, furthermore, several studies of the Johannesburg partnerships for sustainable development have challenged structural-functionalist explanations by showing 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

Andonova, Betsill and Bulkeley 2009; and Biermann and Pattberg 2008. Bäckstrand 2006; Benner et al. 2003; Dingwerth 2005; and Ottaway 2001. Börzel and Risse 2005. Mathews 1997; Ottaway 2001; and Utting 2000. Benner et al. 2003; Kaul 2005; Reinicke 1999; Reinicke and Deng 2000; and Ruggie 2003b. Kaul 2005.

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that these partnerships address governance deªcits unevenly, clustering around selected environmental issues and geographical regions, while neglecting other pressing problems.20 Both Andonova and Levy, as well as Hale and Mauzerall,21 point to a supply-driven dynamic on the part of donor agencies, IOs, and transnational advocacy organizations, rather than a governance-demand driven dynamic in the Johannesburg partnerships. Case studies of the World Commission on Dams and UNEP’s climate initiative with the insurance sector also reveal the active role of international agencies, donor governments, and large transnational actors,22 putting into question assumptions about the role of partnerships in redressing participatory inequalities. The current literature on PPPs thus raises more questions than it has been able to answer, reºecting the early and exploratory stages of this research agenda. This paper seeks to advance the study of global PPPs for the environment in several ways. It considers from a theoretical perspective why IOs have been active entrepreneurs of environmental partnerships with nonstate actors, what kinds of partners they engage with, and under what conditions states would sanction such initiatives. The theoretical framework helps us to better anticipate the modes and variation in PPPs in the multilateral system, and the governance outcomes they produce. The empirical section examines a large and diverse sample of environmental partnerships both to assess the theoretical argument and to provide a broader perspective of this phenomenon and its role in environmental politics.

Principals, Agents and Entrepreneurship of Public-Private Partnerships A political theory of public-private partnerships needs to specify the incentives of existing organizations to evolve and institutionalize hybrid authority. Why would states and IOs, which remain the core of the global governance architecture, share power with nonstate actors? This section advances the argument that IOs are likely entrepreneurs of PPPs, when stimulated by external pressures and enabled by their agency autonomy to engage external actors in ways that support the organizations’ resources, reputation, and governance objectives. To suggest that IOs would, under some circumstances, act as entrepreneurs of collaborative governance can be counter-intuitive to say the least. The popular view of international agencies is one of inert, inefªcient, and closed bureaucracies. Traditional theories of intergovernmental cooperation present IOs as instruments of powerful states or arenas facilitating cooperation at best. Sociological theories of bureaucracies predict rigidity in IOs and a tendency to project bureaucratic culture, standard procedures, ªxed meanings, and existing solu20. Andonova 2006; Andonova and Levy 2003; and Biermann et al. 2007. 21. Andonova and Levy 2003; and Hale and Mauzerall 2004. 22. Dingwerth 2005; Jagers and Stipple 2003; and Reinicke and Deng 2000.

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tions to new problems, often producing self-defeating outcomes.23 From a sociological perspective, learning can also take place in IOs in response to external pressures or new consensual knowledge, but reºective learning and innovation are rare, while basic adaptation strategies are more readily adopted.24 Principalagent explanations of institutional change, such as the greening of the World Bank, have also emphasized the steering role of states as principals.25 The principal-agent model can be developed, however, to consider more squarely the incentives and constraints IOs face in promoting organizational changes and increasing their permeability to nonstate actors.26 I draw on the principal-agent perspective to elaborate the relevance of external pressures and internal constraints for agency initiative and collaborative governance. The principal-agent theory of organizations was ªrst developed in economics for the study of the ªrm, and later applied to the study of political organizations in the United States and more recently to analyzing IOs.27 When applied to IOs, the principal-agent model assumes that states, as multiple or collective principals, delegate authority to IOs to manage cooperative agreements. States use a variety of mechanisms to control their agents such as budgeting, hiring procedures, governance oversight, or internal evaluations. As with all agents, IOs also enjoy some autonomy as a result of incomplete contracts and possibility for reinterpretation, technical specialization producing asymmetric information in favor of the agent, and the high cost of control mechanisms.28 Principal-agent models also assume that IOs have a set of agency interests, and use their autonomy to advance organizational interests and policy agendas.29 The assumption of preference divergences between IOs and states has been challenged by sociological theorists,30 but can be substantiated on a number of grounds, including sociological theory itself. As all bureaucracies, IOs are interested in survival and in maintaining and extending their budgets, competences, legitimacy, and authority.31 Being hubs of technical expertise and epistemic communities, IOs can set policy agendas, promote speciªc policy instruments, or reinterpret institutional contracts in ways that augment their authority.32 The bureaucratic and epistemic interests of IOs may or may not correspond to the preferences of all or a sub-set of principals. In global environmental politics, there have been multiple disconnects between the preferences of IOs and states, most notably related to the persistent gaps in environmental 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

Barnett and Finnemore 2004. Haas 1990; and Siebenhüner 2008. Nielson and Tierney 2003. Gutner 2005; and Hawkins and Jacoby 2006. See Hawkins et al. 2006 for a review of that literature and its application to IOs. Pollack 1997; Nielson and Tierney 2003; and Hawkins et al. 2006. Pollack 1997; and Vaubel 2006. Barnett and Finnemore 2004. Bauer 2006; Weber 1964; Barnett and Finnemore 2004; and Vaubel 2006. Bauer 2006; Haas 1989; Farrell and Heritier 2007; and Pollack 1997.

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ªnancing,33 but also with respect to epistemic knowledge, policy tools, or in the implementation of environmental policies.34 Given the conceptualization of IOs as public actors with delegated authority and a set of agency interests, we can anticipate two general factors likely to inºuence the incentives for agency entrepreneurship of PPPs: i) external pressures and opportunities; and ii) the degree of agency autonomy. Budgetary pressures or limited resources are likely to be important triggers of agency interest to attract nonstate partners for environmental governance— an arena where intergovernmental funding seems perpetually undersupplied. Increasingly, nonstate actors, both in the commercial as well as in the non-proªt sector, command resources that outstrip the budgets of international environmental organizations.35 Maintaining and expanding their budgetary and extrabudgetary funding is at the same time an essential pre-occupation of public bureaucracies.36 We should therefore expect a close relationship between the variation in the willingness of states to provide ªnancing for cooperation and IO budgets, the growth in external non-governmental resources, and the interest of IOs to initiate PPPs. Pressure by nonstate actors and the public at large questioning the effectiveness or legitimacy of IOs is another potential trigger for PPPs. IOs are visible public organizations, which are closely associated with international policy outcomes in a long chain of delegation, and thus an easy target of discontent. Moreover, it is difªcult for the public to distinguish what portion of the governance failures is a result of weak cooperation or implementation on the part of principals and what portion is due to agency inefªciency. When negative public pressure mounts, while the state’s interest to prop-up or reform institutions is low, there may be incentives for IOs to innovate. Partnerships provide a convenient mechanism to engage nonstate actors in dialogue and co-governance on the basis of soft, experimental agreements, which at the same time can deºect pressure, co-opt critics, and increase the ºow of information and expertise.37 IOs may have incentives to act entrepreneurially to create PPPs not only in reaction to external pressures, but also by embracing opportunities to extend their resources and project agency agendas. Fostering partnerships with likeminded nonstate actors and states can be a mechanism to augment agency autonomy and a strategy to promote the agency mandate and toolkits.38 Change of organizational leadership, the negotiation of new institutional frameworks when organizational ªelds are characterized with turbulence, and rise in private interest to invest resources in voluntary governance are particularly likely to pro33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

Keohane and Levy 1996. Haas 1989; Gutner 2005; Bauer 2006; and Siebenhüner 2008. Wapner 1996. Weber 1964; Murphy 2006; Vaubel 2006; and Utting 2000. Börzel and Risse 2005. Hawkins and Jacoby 2006.

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vide windows of opportunity for organizational leaders to engage in such collaborations.39 The principal-agent model also reminds us, however, that IOs can act as entrepreneurs of PPPs mostly within the constraints of their agency autonomy. The extent to which states are interested and able to limit IO autonomy varies, depending on the beneªts which states expect from the technical specialization of the agent, compared to the potential sovereignty costs that can result if the agent acts opportunistically.40 We can speculate, therefore, that agencies with relatively technical mandates are likely to have both better access to networks of external actors and greater autonomy to collaborate with them, since the beneªts of multi-sector technical collaboration can be signiªcant, while the sovereignty costs of potential agency activism may be lower compared to organizations with highly politicized mandates. IOs are also more likely to have greater leeway to engage nonstate actors in the implementation of broadly agreed policies compared to arenas characterized with high contestation and relative gains concerns. Finally, when states as principals have divergent preferences with respect to speciªc policies or instruments, PPPs could provide a soft, reversible, and thus a politically acceptable mechanism for agencies to engage a subset of principals in institutional experimentation. Indeed, strong political backing by a sub-set of principals is likely to be critical for adoption of collaborative agency initiatives ªrst on a pilot basis, and wider principal support would be necessary for more permanent institutionalization of hybrid authority. The logic of agency entrepreneurship of PPPs has a number of observable implications that can be examined systematically. It suggests that PPPs in the multilateral system, unlike more fundamental institutional reforms, are more likely to be initiatives of the agents rather than of the principals. Such initiatives are likely to follow peaks in budgetary shortages, advocacy campaigns, and/or major institutional developments in the intergovernmental sphere. Organizations or units of organizations with relatively technical mandates and access to epistemic communities are more likely to be agency entrepreneurs. The organizational structure of the multilateral system of environmental governance has many of these characteristics in different constellations, which indeed could help explain why the environment has provided such a fertile ground for public-private collaboration. The agency entrepreneurship argument also implies a narrower scope and a more uneven distribution of collaborative initiatives, compared to the broad functional accounts. Partnerships are unlikely to address environmental gaps in their complexity, but rather address them selectively by establishing niches of public-private collaboration where agency incentives and expertise allies with the interests of like-minded and resourceful state and nonstate partners. The following sections examine the observable implications of the agency 39. Fox and Brown 1998; and Ruggie 2003a. 40. Hawkins and Jacoby 2006; and Vaubel 2006.

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entrepreneurship argument across three major partnership programs for the environment: the Small Grants Program of the GEF, the Prototype Carbon Fund, and the environmental portfolio of UNFIP. The cases are selected so as to illuminate the politics of PPPs across three different organizational ªelds, namely the UNDP as the primary host of the Small Grant Program, the World Bank as the host of the Prototype Carbon Fund, and the UN system as a whole. This selection allows us to examine in comparative perspective the role of external factors as well as agency incentives, relative autonomy and expertise in shaping the variation of environmental partnerships in the multilateral system. These three partnership programs furthermore have a comparatively long history. They have facilitated hundreds of PPP projects across the globe, and maintain publicly accessible databases of these projects, permitting a broad comparative analysis and the use of multiple methods such as interviewing, primary document analysis, process tracing, and comparative statistics.

The Small Grants Program The Small Grants Program of the GEF is one of the earliest public-private partnership programs in environmental governance. It was initiated shortly after the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, a forum which symbolized the dawn of global environmental pluralism, but produced essentially intergovernmental treaties and institutions. The Conference supported the establishment of the GEF as an intergovernmental facility for incremental ªnancing for global climate change, biodiversity, desertiªcation, and international waters in developing and transition countries. Ozone depleting substances and persistent organic pollutants were later added to the GEF mandate. The GEF is jointly administered by the World Bank, UNDP, and UNEP with the World Bank designated as trustee. The GEF Council oversees the institution with 16 council members representing the interests of developing countries, 14 members representing donor countries, and two members representing transition countries. The GEF’s institutional structure, and particularly the dominant inºuence of the World Bank and donor states, was highly contested by NGOs and developing countries at its very creation.41 As the principle-agent perspective on IO entrepreneurship anticipates, the Small Grants Program was promoted precisely in the period of the GEF’s creation and contestation, characterized by both pressures and opportunities for new alliances in the framework of the newly established institution. UNDP acted as the main organizational entrepreneur of the Program, capitalizing on these opportunities and drawing support from a network of NGOs and developing-country experts to advance both its role as GEF implementing agency and its programmatic emphasis on sustainable development at the local level.42 The 41. Streck 2001. 42. Ganapin 2007; and Qayum 2003.

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proposal for the Small Grants Program was to channel a portion of GEF ªnancing for small, community-based projects, which combine beneªts to local livelihoods and the global environment. The Program was furthermore designed to involve collaborative decision-making between national government, UNDP country ofªces, civil society, and community organizations, advancing participatory principles in environmental governance. Of the three implementing agencies of the GEF, UNDP had a comparative advantage in promoting such a program due to its decentralization, local reach, and increasing consultation with NGOs. UNDP’s leadership had, prior to the Rio Summit, attempted unsuccessfully to position the organization to be the sole secretariat of the GEF. Following the institutionalization of the GEF and other funding mechanisms for the environment, there were strong ªnancial and policy incentives for UNDP to expand its environmental programs and to carve out for itself a niche within the GEF for community-based governance.43 UNDP ofªcial Jane Wilder Jacqz played an instrumental role in the conception of the initiative and in the negotiations of a small grants pilot within the GEF.44 Environmental activists from the developing world, networks such as World Bank Watch, and developing country representatives in the GEF with links to advocacy movements also pressed for a more participatory and poverty-related orientation of the GEF.45 The Small Grants Program proposal faced resistance from a number of state representatives within the GEF Council, which questioned the ability of small projects to have a meaningful impact on the global environment.46 Supporters of the program emphasized that the GEF’s mandate is also an implementing instrument of Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biological Biodiversity, both of which explicitly call for public participation in sustainable development and work with vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. Delªn Ganapin, one of the main supporters of the Small Grants Program at its conception, summarized these points eloquently in a recent memo, concluding that: From my perspective as one of those Council Members in the early years of the GEF involved in debating the SGP [Small Grants Program], these backgrounds helped get the program started up despite scepticism from a few yet inºuential parties in the Council. This is also a major reason why SGP had always put “sustainable development” as its approach and goal, not simply “environment.”47

Thus, while the Small Grants Program was an agency initiative, UNDP acted largely within the realm of its agency autonomy and subsequently had to gain the support of a sufªcient coalition of principals to have the partnership 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

Murphy 2006. Qayum 2003. Interview with Delªn Ganapin, Small Grants Program, February 2008, New York. Interview with Delªn Ganapin, Small Grants Program, February 2008, New York Ganapin 2007, 1–2.

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approved as a pilot. The experimental time-frame and limited resources allocated to the Small Grants Program lowered the risk of agency activism even to sceptical principals. The Small Grants Program was approved on a pilot basis in 1992, within the general mandate of the GEF and with UNDP as Implementing Agency. The initiative was aided by external pressures and opportunities, and helped to support the contested legitimacy of the GEF. The architects of the Small Grants Program designed its rules so to promote collaborative governance at the national, local, and subsequently at the global level. The ten-year review of the program states: “SGP, at its core, is about partnerships. From management structure and funding mechanisms to grassroots action, partnerships permeate all aspects of SGP operations.”48 Participation in the program requires interested GEF member states to establish a National Steering Committee, composed of government representatives, NGOs, community organizations, and independent experts. Project ªnancing is granted directly to NGOs or community organizations, while government representatives have a co-decision role in the National Steering Committee. The Steering Committee works with the support of local UNDP ofªces and is managed by a National Coordinator working independently of the government. To elicit grassroots involvement, the Program was deliberately designed to disburse small grants between US$ 20,000 and US$ 50,000. Given its small share in GEF ªnancing, the Program was conceived not simply as a project facility, but as a process seeking to provide space for civil society to engage in sustainable development governance.49 The partnership model eventually took hold in the structure of the Small Grants Program, which now involves global-level collaboration and co-ªnancing with a variety of private and public organizations.50 The pilot phase of the Small Grants Program (1992–96) started with US$ 18.2m, of which US$ 14.9m were provided by the GEF Trust Fund, US$ 3m by USAID, and US$ 300,000 by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The funding of this phase reºects targeted support by the US government and a US-based foundation. In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, both the USAID and US foundations had substantially expanded their ªnancing for civil society and the environment, and the Small Grants initiative ªtted well with their environmental democratization agenda. The GEF Council approved the ªrst operational phase of the Program in 1996, institutionalizing it on a more permanent basis and allocated US$ 24m for a two-year period.51 In the period 1992–2009, a total of US$ 247.2m in GEF funding has been allocated to the Small Grants Partnership (which is approximately 3 percent of the total GEF funding of US$ 8.6bn); and US$ 242.8m have been contributed by partners in cash or as in-kind equivalent.52 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

Qayum 2003, 8. Interviews with Terence Hay-Edie, SGP, New York, February 2008. UNDP 2009. Qayum 2003. Sources of data: UNDP 2009; and GEF 2009a.

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During the pilot phase of the Small Grants Program, only 33 developing and transition countries participated, which reºected a limited understanding of and interest by states to adopt a collaborative approach to environmental governance. Countries that joined early on were those with vibrant civil societies and greater degrees of government openness.53 As of 2009, the Small Grants Program has established 84 country ofªces and supported over 10,000 partnership projects across 101 countries.54 Through its international program meetings and the activities of UNDP ofªces, this partnership supported the expansion of transnational networks of epistemic communities, NGOs, and governmental and intergovernmental agencies in the area of sustainable development and the broader acceptance of collaborative governance.55 A document for the 2007 evaluation of the Small Grants Program points out, however, that countries such as China and Russia, which “don’t have strong traditions of civil society organizations” have not joined the program, “even though both countries rank very high in terms of total GEF grants for Medium Size Projects and Full Size Projects.”56 The simultaneous limitations and expansion of this partnership illustrate the relevance of agency autonomy and principal control, as well as the role of transnational networks in gradually facilitating the broader acceptance of hybrid authority. China eventually joined the Small Grants Program in 2008, some 16 years after the start of its pilot phase, and accepted the establishment of a multi-stakeholder National Steering Committee. Russia applied for participation in 2009, with an anticipated start date of 2010. The Small Grants Program has supported two main niches of collaborative governance: biodiversity conservation and access to clean energy. Biodiversity partnerships comprise by far the largest share of Small Grants Program activities, accounting for over 70 percent of its portfolio in the early years.57 The strong focus on biodiversity reºects both the proliferation of transnational advocacy networks for biodiversity management and a long-standing organizational culture of consultation between UNDP and NGOs, which accelerated after the appointment in 1993 of the former President of the World Resources Institute James Gustave Speth as UNDP Administrator. Local biodiversity management, which relates closely to food security, agriculture, and forestry activities in developing countries, has been furthermore particularly conducive to linking global environmental protection to human development issues emphasized by UNDP. With the advance of climate cooperation in the late 1990s and the growth of transnational organizations working on climate and energy issues, the share of climate partnerships increased in the Small Grants Program portfolio. By 53. Wells et al. 1998. 54. UNDP 2009. 55. Interviews with Terence Hay-Edie, Small Grants Program, New York, February 2008 and with Craig Murphy, UNDP Historian, September 2008, Wellesley, MA. 56. GEF Evaluation Ofªce 2007b, 5. 57. Wells et al. 1998, 2.

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2008, approximately 60 percent of the Small Grants partnerships were related to biodiversity, 20 percent focused on climate change, 6 percent on international waters and 14 percent on multi-focal issues.58 Surprisingly, land degradation is virtually absent as a stand-alone category in the portfolio of the Small Grants Program, despite being critical for local sustainability and inadequately addressed by global institutions. Such clustering of governance niches, even within a partnership oriented to support local communities, reºects the alignment of organizational expertise and partner interests, and cannot be explained solely on the basis of broad structural and functional factors. The governance outcomes of the Small Grants partnerships are different in several respects from those of the more traditional large and medium sized GEF project, typically granted to governments. In the overall GEF portfolio, the majority of projects focus on transfer of technology for climate mitigation, on international water cooperation, and on abatement of ozone depleting substances.59 Countries such as China and Russia, which have not been active participants in the Small Grants Program, are both among the top ten recipients of GEF funding. Furthermore, the annual GEF reports emphasize the scale of the institution’s operation and its macro impacts. The 2009 GEF brief on climate change, for example, points out that it has invested US$ 2.7bn in climatechange projects, with additional US$ 17.2bn in co-ªnancing, resulting in 1bn tons of greenhouse-gas emissions avoided.60 The 2009 Biodiversity brief emphasizes that the “GEF is the largest funding mechanism for protected areas worldwide,” it has supported “the development of National Biosafety Frameworks in 122 countries,” and it “has invested $2.8 billion, leveraging $7.6 billion in co-ªnancing . . . in 155 countries to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity.”61 The Small Grants Program reports, by contrast, emphasize the micro effects of their partnerships on sustainability and livelihoods. A review of Small Grants projects for climate change indicates, for example, that the greatest share of projects (over 80 percent of those implemented in Africa, Asia, South America, and the Middle East) relate to the provision of climate-friendly household energy services such as cooking stoves, lighting, water heating, grain milling, and irrigation; while in transition countries Small Grants partnerships pioneered initiatives in household and municipal energy efªciency (Figure 1). The outcomes of Small Grants partnerships for biodiversity are also reported in terms of their human and sustainability impacts. The ten-year review of the Program summarizes for example that in Mexico, Small Grants partnerships resulted in outcomes such as: “conserving 127 species . . . beneªted more than 1,000 people . . . conserving 57,716 hectares of habitat . . . prevented the annual emission of more than 2 million tons of CO2 as a result of protecting 58. 59. 60. 61.

UNDP 2008. GEF 2007. GEF 2009b, 1. GEF 2009c, 1. Figures are in US dollars.

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Figure 1 Governance Niches of Small Grants Program Climate Change Partnerships by Region, 1992–2002 (percentage of total) Source: Gitonga 2003, 22.

36,799 hectares of tropical forest.”62 The Small Grants partnerships have a markedly different governance scale compared to large, national projects and emphasize the creation of incremental, locally rooted, and cumulative global impacts. The most recent independent evaluation of the Program recognized its cumulative impact, concluding for the ªrst time since its establishment, that it has “a slightly higher success rate in achieving global environmental beneªts and signiªcantly higher rate in sustaining them than Medium and Full Size Projects.”63 In addition to project-based governance outcomes, the Small Grants Program has produced broader impacts in terms of strengthening the position of civil-society organizations in environmental policy making across host countries and within the GEF. Within the GEF, the Program was the ªrst initiative that experimented with and legitimated collaboration with nonstate actors. The GEF has itself evolved considerably64 and now describes itself as a partnership of “179 member governments—in partnership with international institutions, 62. Qayum 2003, 45. 63. GEF Evaluation Ofªce 2007a, 4. 64. Streck 2001.

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nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the private sector.”65 The Small Grants Program is also considered a ºagship partnership within UNDP and has stimulated an expansion of UNDP’s repertoire of collaborative governance initiatives particularly in the areas of biodiversity management and sustainable energy.66

The Prototype Carbon Fund The Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) is a public-private partnership, in which the World Bank, governments, and commercial actors collaborate in the ªnancing, implementation, and crediting of project-based greenhouse-gas emission reductions. Similar to the Small Grants Program, the PCF was an initiative of a development IO with considerable agency autonomy, but very different organizational structure and expertise compared to UNDP. The proposal for a fund to facilitate project-based carbon reductions came out of the World Bank’s Environment Department in the run-up to the negotiations of the Kyoto Protocol.67 The Environment Department was established by the World Bank in 1987 to support the greening of the organization. It is a technical department that provides expertise, research, and advising related to integrating environmental considerations within the Bank’s policies and practices, but has no direct engagement in the Bank’s core business related to loan preparation, negotiation, and management. This technical unit has enjoyed a considerable amount of autonomy to promote and experiment with the implementation of a variety of policy instruments linking markets and the environment, such as tradable permits, green accounting, valuation, privatization of environmental services, and enterprise waste minimization. Although carbon trading was hotly contested on the eve of the Kyoto negotiations both by the European Union (EU) and developing countries, the proposed fund ªt well with the World Bank’s approach to sustainable development. The agreement on the Kyoto Protocol with three ºexibility mechanisms— emissions trading, Joint Implementation (JI), and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)—provided a window of opportunity for the Bank’s carbon fund initiative. The PCF was proposed as a mechanism for incremental “learning by doing” to support project-based emission reductions envisaged by the Kyoto Protocol.68 JI and the CDM, which were intended to beneªt the Bank’s major clients—developing and transition countries—respectively, required considerable capacity and institution-building related to assessing baseline scenarios, carbon accounting, granting of emission reductions credits, and transaction transparency. The World Bank acted with foresight and within the realm of its 65. 66. 67. 68.

GEF no date. Qayum 2003; and Murphy 2006. Kelly and Jordan 2004. Interviews with staff of the Environment Department, World Bank, Washington, D.C., April 2002; and with staff in the World Bank Carbon Finance Unit, January 2009.

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expert autonomy to position itself early on to play an important role in the development of carbon markets. The PCF was also an opportunity for the Bank to directly involve the private sector, which it promoted as a broader strategy for environmental ªnancing and management. Thus similar to the Small Grants Program, the PCF was an agency initiative, envisaged initially as a pilot facility to jumpstart carbon markets.69 The PCF initiative was strongly supported by the then World Bank President James Wolfensohn. It was in line with the leadership’s effort to buffer continuous advocacy criticisms of the inadequacy of the Bank’s environmental reforms, and to mainstream the environmental and participatory approaches within the Bank’s work.70 The extent of principals’ support for the PCF pilot was variable, but not obstructionist. Those donor countries which were supportive of the Kyoto Protocol and interested in taking advantage of its ºexibility mechanisms, such as Canada, Finland, Japan, the Netherlands, and Norway, provided political support and ªnancing to the PCF. The US and other inºuential principals of the World Bank did not subscribe to the PCF pilot, but neither did they actively oppose it. The US Congress was critical of the Kyoto Protocol, while many EU countries were still doubtful about the extent to which the ºexibility mechanisms should be used by industrialized states to meet their commitments. Seventeen private companies joined the PCF, mostly from the energy and ªnancial sectors. Public and private participants committed a total of US$ 180m to the PCF for the operational period 2000–2012.71 The leverage of additional soft ªnancing combined with the pilot nature of the initiative and the Bank’s expertise in ªnancial management and market mechanisms, enhanced the autonomy of the agency to propose a partnership for the development of carbon markets and gain explicit or tacit support from its principals, even while they remained divided with respect to the Kyoto Protocol and its ºexibility mechanisms. What made the World Bank a likely entrepreneur and attractive partner in this publicprivate initiative was its expertise in ªnancial and fund management, and its role as a clearing house for information and best practices in market development.72 Ken Newcombe, one of the chief architects of the PCF and its ªrst Head, emphasized in an interview shortly after the approval of the fund: “The key asset of the PCF is knowledge, to inform negotiators about the rules about previous PCF experiences on efªcient and inefªcient markets.”73 The Board of Executive Directors, representing the interests of the Bank’s most inºuential principals, approved the establishment of the PCF on 20 July 1999. The World Bank was designated as a trustee of the PCF. The partnership was launched with some delay at the beginning of 2000, due to concerns from 69. Interviews with staff of the Environment Department, World Bank, Washington, D.C., April 2002; and with staff in the World Bank Carbon Finance Unit, January 2009. 70. Gutner 2005. 71. Freestone 2003 72. Interview with staff of the Prototype Carbon Unit, January 2008. 73. Newcombe 2000.

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members of the Executive Board that a rapid approval of the PCF could interfere with the continued negotiations related to the Kyoto Protocol and the scope of its ºexibility mechanisms.74 A Fund Management Committee, drawn from the World Bank, a Participants Committee representing both public and private actors, and a Host Countries Committee representing developing and transition countries, were established to manage and oversee the PCF.75 David Freestone, the Bank’s Chief Legal Council, described the PCF as “unique in that it is the ªrst trust fund established by the World Bank which permits contributions from both the public and the private sectors and which also provides something in return.”76 The partnership approach was a mechanism to carve out within the technical mandate of the World Bank a narrow area of collective action for carbon mitigation in agreement with like-minded principals and nonstate actors. The PCF was furthermore independently funded, bringing in additional resources and not requiring its principals to agree on a permanent or more fundamental reorganization of the institution. As the principal-agent argument concerning partnership entrepreneurship anticipates, the geographical patterns and outcomes of projects facilitated by the PCF are highly uneven, and reºect the lead agency’s emphasis on cost-effective emission reductions and the interest of its partners in high-return projects. Of the active PCF ªnancing portfolio, 61 percent is implemented in China alone, 15 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean (with Brazil, Chile, and Guatemala hosting a large share of the projects), and 14 percent in Europe and Central Asia (Figure 2). As a result, over 90 percent of PCF ªnancing is directed toward only three regions, and in a relatively small number of countries, characterized by the presence of rapidly developing markets, favorable investment climate, and opportunities for low-cost emission reductions.77 Of all PCF ªnancing, only 3 percent is implemented in Africa, in effect bypassing states in the core constituencies of the Bank, characterized by great deªciencies in clean technology and expertise related to carbon markets (Figure 2). The emphasis on technical solutions and cost-effective emission reductions is similarly reºected in the types of technologies implemented through PCF projects. The destruction of HFC-23 and capture of coalmine methane account each for 23 percent of PCF ªnancing, while hydro power, energy efªciency, and wind power account for 15 percent, 10 percent, and 10 percent respectively. Both the regional clustering and technology portfolio of the PCF are dramatically different from the climate portfolio of the Small Grants Program, which emphasizes energy efªciency, biofuels, solar, and other renewables targeting households and communities across multiple geographic regions (Figures 1 and 2). These dramatic differences between two partnership portfolios, which operate in roughly the same domain of climate change and development, illus74. 75. 76. 77.

Kelly and Jordan 2004. World Bank 2009. Freestone 2003, 1–2. World Bank 2009.

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Figure 2 Regional Clustering of PCF Projects (percentage of portfolio value) Source: World Bank 2009, 25.

trate the formative role of institutional embeddedness and agency toolkits in shaping partnership structure and outcomes. NGOs have criticized the PCF and the now much larger system of carbon ªnance at the World Bank for favoring large-scale projects, with extensive focus on chemical gases and coal.78 The 2004 evaluation of the PCF by the World Bank’s Operations Evaluation Department pointed out, however, that the PCF originally envisaged investing in even a smaller number of 12–15 projects, seeking large-scale, highly efªcient outcomes. The report points out, however, that “political considerations” stemming from the World Bank’s diverse membership and political mandate, resulted in a revised strategy of investing in a greater number of smaller projects to diversify across countries and technologies producing higher overall transaction costs.79 These two diametrically opposed interpretations of the PCF’s portfolio illustrate a central tension in PPPs between, on one hand, the interests and expertise of core partners and, on the other hand, public expectations about the broader societal goals towards which partnerships contribute. The policy and institutional impacts of the PCF, similar to the case of the 78. Arce and Marston 2009. 79. Kelly and Jordan 2004.

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Small Grants Program, have been considerably broader than its project outcomes. The PCF has had a signiªcant impact on the climate-change policies and institutional practices of the World Bank. It was the ªrst PPP in what is now a large and expanding Carbon Finance Unit within the World Bank, comprising eleven carbon funds and facilities and the recently established Carbon Partnership Facility and Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. The Carbon Finance Unit involves the collaboration of 16 donor governments and 66 companies, and has generated US$ 2.13bn of total funds pledged.80 Despite the establishment of a Community Development Carbon Fund in 2003 and a BioCarbon Fund to balance the limited share of PCF partnerships directed to poor countries, community investment remains a fraction of overall carbon ªnancing. The overall World Bank carbon ªnance partnership portfolio is dominated by projects in China, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, and by HFC-23 destruction (54 percent of all ªnancing), hydro power (8 percent), and energy efªciency (10 percent).81 Capacity building programs such as Carbon Finance Assist have been extended to sixty countries82 to support broader involvement in carbon markets. The PCF and related initiatives have extended ªnancial support and institutional mechanisms to support carbon investment and markets as a key instrument in climate cooperation, and to diffuse partnerships between public and private organizations as a mode of climate governance and mitigation ªnancing.

The UN Fund for International Partnerships The UN Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) was established in 1998 when several conditions for agency entrepreneurship at the UN were in place. When Koª Annan assumed the post of UN Secretary General in January 1997, the organization faced high membership arrears, an unstable budget, and criticism of bureaucratization and ineffectiveness. Although Annan came from within the UN system, the change of leadership opened opportunities and indeed expectation for organizational change. The new Secretary General viewed cooperation with nonstate actors and the private sector in particular as an important and hitherto not sufªciently explored path to provide a social pillar for economic globalization, and to reinvigorate the UN itself.83 An ofªce of Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Planning and Policy Coordination was established within the secretariat to promote greater coordination within the UN and more substantive cooperation among UN agencies and nonstate actors. The Global Compact, a collaborative agreement with business entities for the volun-

80. 81. 82. 83.

Freestone 2009. World Bank 2009. World Bank 2009, 19. Interview with former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Planning and Policy Coordination John Ruggie, Boston, January 2008.

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tary implementation of UN norms on human rights, social rights, the environment and transparency was one of the ºagship initiatives of this agenda.84 The creation of UNFIP was thus not an isolated phenomenon, but ªt within broader reforms seeking to open up the organization to collaborative governance. UNFIP’s establishment was precipitated by a crisis and an opportunity. In 1997, the US Congress failed to appropriate the US contribution to the UN, then equivalent to roughly 30 percent of the organization’s budget. In a gesture that surprised many, the US philanthropist Ted Turner donated US$ 1bn to the UN as a private grant to compensate for the US government arrears. The UN Foundation was set up as a private charity outside the UN system to manage the Turner gift, to advocate for the UN, and to leverage additional private resources for UN causes.85 This philanthropic initiative presented a unique opportunity for the UN leadership to institutionalize a channel for collaborative governance within the UN system. Koª Annan presented a concept paper for a special Fund to be jointly created between the UN and the UN Foundation, which would use the Turner gift to promote and support partnerships between UN agencies, the private sector, and other nonstate actors. The paper was coordinated with the Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, a subsidiary body of 16 members appointed by the General Assembly, and the establishment of UNFIP in agreement with the UN Foundation was reported to the General Assembly in November 1998. The Fund was designed as a small operation within the UN Secretariat, headed by an Executive Director who reports directly to the Deputy Secretary General. The partnership activities of UNFIP are overseen by its Advisory Board and by the UN Foundation Board. An annual report of these activities is submitted to the UN General Assembly. The opening of the UN to collaborative governance was initially met with reservations within the UN bureaucracy and by some member states. Many developing countries and the G77 as a group questioned whether the Secretary General had the authority to bring in the private sector in a “uniquely intergovernmental body.”86 Traditional UN bureaucrats saw initiatives such as the Global Compact and the Fund for International Partnerships largely as mechanisms to raise money, rather than to establish dialogue, learning, and common governance objectives.87 To justify such initiatives and increase the space for agency entrepreneurship, the leadership of the organization presented the engagement of external actors and their resources as an opportunity to advance the voluntary implementation of norms, which are sanctioned by broadly adopted UN documents and therefore rest within the agency mandate of the UN.88 84. 85. 86. 87.

Nelson 2002; and Ruggie 2003a. Interview with Andrea Gay, UN Foundation, Washington, January 2008. King 2001. Interview with John Ruggie, January 2009, and with Gawaher Atif, United Nations Fund for International Partnerships, July 2007. 88. King 2001; and Ruggie 2003a.

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The pattern of partnership projects realized under the umbrella of UNFIP provides further evidence of the relevance of agency initiative, expertise, and relative autonomy in facilitating collaborative governance. According to the latest report of UNFIP, the two largest areas of partnership activity have been children’s health and the environment, accounting respectively for 17 percent and 33 percent of all partnership projects in the period 1999–2006, attracting 61 percent and 16 percent of the Fund’s partnership ªnancing respectively. The smaller share of environmental partnership ªnancing relative to the greater share of environmental partnership projects in the UNFIP portfolio reºects the fact that partnerships in the health sphere have tended to be larger and more resource-intensive, compared to environmental partnerships. Additional areas of partnership activities include population and women with 13 percent of the 1999–2006 ªnancing, peace, security and human rights (5 percent), and other projects (3 percent).89 It is indicative that peace, security and human rights are compressed in a single category with a small share of partnership activity. These issues, while being at the core of the UN mandate and suffering from many policy failures, tend to be politically contested and more tightly controlled by sovereign states as exempliªed by the structures of the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council. Furthermore, from the perspective of the UN Foundation and other private partners, partnership involvement in politically contentious, complex, and intractable issues is not very attractive as it involves greater political risk and likelihood of failure. By contrast, children’s health and the environment exemplify compelling global challenges which at the same time can be broken down into smaller, more technical and deliverable objectives on which actors can agree and achieve measurable results.90 The portfolio of UNFIP was also shaped by the degree of expertise and activism of UN agencies, particularly those with prior experience or leadership interested in expanding collaboration with nonstate actors.91 If we consider more closely the environmental portfolio of UNFIP, we see that a quarter of these partnerships are initiatives of UNEP, another quarter of UNDP, and close to quarter of UNESCO (Figure 3). These three organizations, although quite different in mandates and structure, are all characterized by a high degree of technical expertise, extensive epistemic networks, and relatively consensual mandates. Historically, these organizations had also established channels of communication, interaction, fund raising, or co-implementation with external experts and a variety of nonstate actors. UNFIP presented an opportunity for the organizational entrepreneurs within these agencies to expand collaborative governance activities and extend the organizations’ programs and priorities. Figure 4 indicates that the two major governance niches of UNFIP environmental partnerships are sustainable energy (approximately 32 percent of all 89. UN General Assembly 2008, Annex I. 90. Interview with Andrea Gay, UN Foundation, January 2009. 91. Interview with William Kennedy, UN Fund for International Partnerships, January 2009.

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Figure 3 Agency Leadership of UNFIP Environmental Partnerships (Percentage of Environmental Portfolio) Source: UNFIP 2008b.

environmental partnerships) and biodiversity (approximately 42 percent of all environmental partnerships), a pattern which is not very dissimilar from the issue clustering of Small Grants Program partnerships.92 UNDP and UNEP’s Division of Technology, Industry and Economics have played an important role in deªning collaboration with the UN Foundation on sustainable energy as one of the priority thematic areas for UNFIP.93 The majority of the sustainable energy partnerships have been initiatives of UNEP, UNDP and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) in collaboration with their nongovernmental partners (Figure 4). The African Rural Energy Enterprise Development Initiative, for example, is a PPP promoted by the UNEP Division of Technology, Industry and Economics and UNEP’s Regional Ofªce for Africa. It involves collaboration with private companies, NGOs, technical institutes, and governmental ofªces in ªve African countries to promote small- and mediumscale clean energy enterprises and services in rural areas. The partnership has rendered deliverable results such as investment of US$ 1.2m in 35 energy enter92. UNFIP 2008b. 93. UNFIP 2001.

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Figure 4 Governance Niches of UNFIP Environmental Partnerships Source: UNFIP 2008b.

prises serving 331,000 people, and reducing CO2 emissions by 421,637 tons annually.94 The initiative has been more recently extended to Brazil and China. UNESCO, in turn, has played an important role in spearheading initiatives for a greater role for the private sector and NGOs in the conservation and management of UNESCO World Heritage Sites designated as such for their biological diversity. While these sites, by the virtue of their World Heritage designation, already attract more attention and resources in comparison with other biodiversity hotspots, they present a niche for PPPs because of the opportunity to leverage UNESCO’s reach and brand with additional private resources and expertise in ways that reconcile conservation, cultural, and development objectives. As a result, biodiversity accounts for 42 percent of all environmental partnerships of UNFIP, with over half of all biodiversity being related to the World Heritage Sites.95 UNDP has also played an active role in shaping the cluster of biodiversity partnerships, which is not surprising given its trajectory of promoting community-based conservation through the Small Grants Program and other PPPs.96 Similar to the two other partnership programs examined in this paper, UNFIP has contributed to the broader institutionalization and legitimization of collaborative governance in the multilateral system.97 As a result of the consider94. 95. 96. 97.

UNFIP 2008a, 7. Calculations based on data from UNFIP 2008b. UNFIP 2008b. Nelson 2002.

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able philanthropic contributions it has brought in and its outcome-oriented approach to governance, UNFIP has been less controversial compared to other partnership initiatives, such as the Global Compact or the PCF. The engagement of UN agencies with relatively technical mandates and the reporting of tangible investments and governance results across a selected spectrum of issues have helped to consolidate support for partnerships within the UN system. The UN Fund for International Partnership has led to the creation of the United Nations Ofªce for Partnerships under the current Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, a more permanent structure which comprises the UN itself, a recently established UN Democracy Fund, and a Partnership Advisory Service and Outreach.

Conclusion Public-private partnerships are a new and expanding dimension of the complex landscape of environmental governance. Understanding their role, governance niches, and relations to other governance mechanisms is an important and challenging aspect of the study of environmental cooperation. By elaborating a principal-agent model of organizational entrepreneurship of PPPs in the multilateral system, this article contributes to the systematic study of collaborative governance and hybrid authority in several ways. Theoretically, it posits that greater attention should be placed on IOs as actors in global environmental politics and on unpacking organizational characteristics to understand the conditions for and outcome of collaborative governance. Empirically, it moves away from debating the governance strengths and deªciencies of prominent partnerships towards a systematic analysis of the political dynamics of partnership creation and the resulting patterns and outcomes of hybrid authority across different organizational ªelds and across a large number of cases. The environmental arena, it has been shown here, has provided fertile ground for collaborative governance precisely around the mandates of IOs with strong technical expertise, epistemic networks, and relatively high agency activism. In the three samples examined, partnerships cluster in areas of converging IO expertise and partners’ interests, in ways that supplement rather than subsume the overarching institution or regime. As such, they hardly represent a power-shift or re-ordering of the global governance system. Partnerships nevertheless do create new niches of governance in the multilateral system. The extent of community-based, collaborative governance for sustainable development within the GEF, within the UNDP, and across thousands of communities around the globe would hardly have taken its present form in the absence of the Small Grants Program, one of the pioneering partnerships initiatives. It took over 15 years of networking, capacity-building, and facilitating of partnership projects to consolidate the inºuence of the Small Grants Program and to tailor other partnership programs on its model. While many public, private, and hybrid institutions have been involved in the construction of global carbon markets, the PCF was one of the earliest initiatives for

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jump-starting carbon mitigation projects and market transactions in developing and transition countries, building capacity, and eventually making climate change a focal area of the World Bank’s environmental policies. Interestingly, all three partnerships examined in this article, despite their considerable differences in organizational leadership, partners, scale, and instruments, converged in their substantial emphasis on clean energy and biodiversity management as niches of governance. While the PCF does not focus on biodiversity, the broader carbon ªnance portfolio of the World Bank places a growing emphasis on forests and their climate and biodiversity co-beneªts. Paradoxically, because of the complexity and multi-scale nature of these two governance challenges, they seem to provide more opportunities for disaggregating the broad issues into narrower governance objectives around which the incentives for collective action of a set of private and public, local, and global actors may converge. PPPs are a diverse and fragmented phenomenon requiring considerable systematic research to assess its multiple and cumulative impacts on the environment. By illuminating some central political dynamics and patterns of public-private collaboration, this study adds an important piece to the environmental governance puzzle and hopes to spur further research on the niches of partnership governance and their effects.

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