The Development of Agenda 21: Generating a Viable Formula

The Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) was in session between March 18 and April 5, 1991. The Project on the Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) sent two observers to the session. Many issues were discussed and debated among the national delegations. One of them, presented in detail for the first time, was Agenda 21, a program to coordinate action on environmental and developmental issues after the 1992 UNCED conference. The joint purpose of this working paper is to witness the generation of a new formula -- an agreement in principle -- concerning Agenda 21 and to provide guidance and recommendations to the Secretariat on how to handle this issue to achieve an early convergence of interests among the national delegations. First, the paper presents initial reactions to the Agenda 21 proposal that PIN observed at the meeting. Based upon these reactions, the goals of Agenda 21, and a conceptual understanding of how stable formulas are generated, a range of options for the further development of an Agenda 21 proposal is derived. These options contain what may be a workable formula for Agenda 21 -- one that can be debated and hopefully accepted by the national delegations. Finally, a set of next steps is presented. This working paper is the product of a larger study of issue and coalition dynamics in the prenegotiation phase of UNCED. Within that study, this paper serves the purpose of documenting and analyzing the development of a new and important issue for the PrepCom -- the generation of a substantive formula for Agenda 21. While the content of such a formula is being developed, the paper also begins to analyze the initial behavioral development of national perspectives, preferences, and interests concerning this issue. It is hypothesized that these perspectives will eventually result in the formation of coalitions in the context of Agenda 21

International Negotiation Support Systems: Assessing the Need for Practical Tools

The concept for this study originated at a workshop on Systems Analysis Techniques for International Negotiation sponsored by the Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) Project at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria in October 1991. That meeting was attended primarily by methodologists who have studied and developed a wide range of systematic and quantitative analytical techniques that seek to assist negotiators in effectively accomplishing various aspects of heir practical tasks. All of the participants had published widely on particular methodological tools that, at least theoretically, would increase the process efficiency and outcome satisfaction of negotiating parties. The PIN Project sponsors of the workshop bluntly confronted these experts with an anomaly: If the analytical methodologies which they developed were so useful, why are they not being applied widely in actual negotiation settings? Under what circumstances were these methods being used, what were the problems encountered, and what were the effects on the negotiation process and outcome? One of the conclusions reached at the workshop was that these methodological experts had many good ideas to enhance the process of negotiation through the use of analytical techniques, but had very limited conceptions of the practical needs of negotiators. In market terms, they had a good handle on the supply but limited knowledge of consumer demand. Thus, a valuable outcome of the workshop was the recommendation to conduct a study to explore the analytical requirements of practical negotiators. If these needs could be understood, then the appropriate analytical methodologies could be designed and offered to an interested and attentive user group, negotiators. This report is the product of that requirements analysis

Creativity in Negotiation: Directions of Research

The purpose of this paper is to examine this "eureka" phenomenon more closely -- to describe its characteristics of freshness and discovery, to assess its preconditions, and to understand how it can be activated consciously. The paper evaluates the concept of creativity as a central strategic and processual element in the dynamics of impasse resolution and one that should receive more attention by the research community

Post-Negotiation: Is the Implementation of Future Negotiated Environmental Agreements Threatened? A Pilot Study

This paper is a contribution to IIASA's research concerning the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). It explores a question -- that of post-negotiation implementation of agreements -- which is often ignored by negotiation researchers because, technically, it lies outside the process. However, given the urgency and severity of many of the environmental problems being negotiated at UNCED and on the agenda for future negotiations, it is extremely important to conduct analyses and make recommendations concerning how negotiated agreements are or should be implemented at a global, regional, and local level. While there is an emerging literature on regime building and compliance with negotiated agreements in the negotiation field, the issue of treaty ratification -- a first step in the post-negotiation process -- has received little attention. This pilot study attempts to shed some light, through a systematic analysis of historical environmental treaties, on the difficulties of ratification and their roots in treaty and issue complexity. Several policy recommendations are made, drawing upon the lessons learned from this analysis, to modify current negotiation and post-negotiation processes in such a way as to reduce treaty ratification time

International Environmental Negotiation. Insights for Practice

Environment and development issues are beginning to receive the attention they deserve from a global audience that, for the most part, is now willing to confront these problems directly. The resolution of many of these issues is acknowledged to be a matter of global survival. This Executive Report highlights some of the results of a two-year analysis of international environmental negotiations conducted by a distinguished team of diplomats, international civil servants, and scholars, and sponsored by IIASA's Processes of International Negotiation Project. In-depth analyses of eight major negotiations were performed -- including talks on ozone depletion, global warming, the transport of hazardous materials, acid rain, sea pollution, inland water pollution, desertification, biological diversity, and nuclear pollution -- and lessons were drawn for negotiators and diplomats, international organizations, third-party mediators, and researchers. Excerpts from that analysis are included in this Executive Report. A complete description of the study and its findings are published in a new IIASA book, "International Environmental Negotiation," edited by Gunnar Sjoestedt and issued by Sage Publications

Summary of the Workshop on Systems Analysis Techniques for International Negotiation

The purpose of the workshop was to answer some very critical questions about the utility of systems analysis techniques in support of international negotiation, namely: Why are these techniques not used very much during negotiations? Is there really a role for them? How can the situation be turned around so that these tools can be truly supportive to practitioners? What are the contents, plan, and architecture for a meaningful set of techniques? The issues that were to be addressed are given in this paper

The Post-Agreement Negotiation Process: The Problems of Ratifying International Environmental Agreements

National ratification of international environmental agreements is a prime example of post-agreement negotiations. It is often the first subprocess in a larger process of sustained negotiations that occur after international accords are concluded, focused on implementation of those accords. Certainly, implementation of negotiated agreements involves legal, political, verification, and enforcement activities at both domestic and international levels. Many of these activities, including ratification, are characterized by negotiations between various stakeholders to reach mutually beneficial and acceptable means to achieve national implementation of, and compliance with, treaty provisions. This paper places ratification negotiations within the larger conceptual context of post-agreement negotiations, with the goal of understanding and explaining problems of treaty compliance. An empirical analysis is conducted to assess the impact of various inherent and situational factors on problems in the ratification process. Ultimately, we are interested in identifying ways of improving the international negotiation process that initiated these later problems in implementation

Supporting Negotiations: Methods, Techniques, and Practice

The family of decision analysis techniques can be applied effectively to support practical negotiators in international settings. These techniques are most appropriate in support of the prenegotiation phase, when parties are diagnosing the situation, assessing their own plans and strategies, and evaluating likely reactions and outcomes. The paper identifies how these approaches have and can be used to assist negotiation practitioners, offer a rationale for the application of decision analytic approaches in terms of the particular analytical requirements of the prenegotiation period, suggests how these process-oriented tools can be integrated with substantive tools, and discusses ways in which these tools can be presented and delivered to practitioners in a practical and confidence-building manner

Negotiating International Regimes: Lessons Learned from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)

The UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) produced above all the beginning of a new process, rather than arriving at a singular and conclusive agreement to a specific problem - often the more common outcome of negotiation. Whereas outwardly the UNCED process was familiar, it soon was to distinguish itself as a singularly instructive set of "regime-building" negotiations. This important new work, developed by IIASA, explains and analyses the negotiation process of building international environmental regimes. Its value will be considerable as the international community faces the need to establish the variety of sub-regimes (desertification, forestry, and others) spawned by UNCED. This work offers the conceptual and practical building blocks, as learned from UNCED, to all those engaged, and interested in the means to ensure sustainable development and the economic and environmental well-being of humanity. The text is accompanied by valuable appendices