What the world needs is another regulatory agency. That is the conclusion of legal and environmental experts at the Tokyo-based U.N. University, who believe a new world environmental organization, as well as an international environmental court, could help make sense of the more than 500 environmental agreements and agencies operating around the world. In a report, the U.N. University folks called for the idea to be debated at September’s Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. The report said that the global body would be analogous to the World Trade Organization (although with a very different mandate). It said such a body was necessary because although environmental problems are increasingly international in nature (think global warming), the current system of international environmental governance is “too complicated [and] steadily getting worse.”
