11. The Global Commons

The system of international organizations (IOs) that has developed to deal with commons issues, mostly environmental in nature and mostly over the past four decades, is marked by a few central IOs that address the range of commons issues, but at a fairly general level, and a much larger number of small IOs and regimes that address the governance of specific commons issues. This chapter addresses these features of the system, beginning with a discussion of the most central of the IOs, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and continuing with a survey of smaller and more specific environmental IOs and regimes, with a focus on cooperation on addressing climate change. It then looks at the role of science in the system.