ABSTRACT
The rise of environmental diplomacy is a distinct development in modern international relations. In recent decades, states have negotiated over 700 multilateral policy agreements and over 1,000 bilateral agreements on ecological issues (Mitchell 2003 ). At any given time, a multilateral environmental meeting of government representatives is taking place somewhere in the world, with Geneva, New York, Bonn, Bangkok, and New Delhi among the common venues of diplomacy. Climate change alone has been the subject of 20 rounds of formal negotiations between 2007 and the end of 2011. Policy-makers complain of “negotiation fatigue” and regime saturation. Between 1992 and 2007, major conferences related to 10 of the existing multilateral environmental agreements have taken 115 days per year (Muñoz et al. 2009 ). When we add other environmental issues as well as the plethora of pre-negotiation meetings and technical workshops, we observe a world in perpetual negotiation over environmental policy.
