Sustainability Policies and Diplomacy

This chapter examines the main actors engaged in sustainability policy and diplomacy: multilaterals, governments, companies, academia, civil society, and individual consumers. First, it discusses how development policies and environmental policies converge to give rise to sustainability policies, which are mainly fostered by global agreements consolidated in the Rio Conventions. After a brief historical overview of the process leading to the conventions, the chapter examines how sustainability is dealt with as a diplomatic object and how multilateral agreements percolate to and interact with national and local decision-making. It then examines each of the actors individually and some of the interactions among them. Scientific panels are approached as boundary objects that provoke a dialogue between science and society but still have many practical limitations. More bottom-up approaches, related to social movements and individual behaviour, are also addressed as key voices in the sustainability policy and diplomacy.