The impact of country-specific social capital on implementing multilateral environmental protection treaties
It is no secret that the 21st century will pose dramatic challenges to ecosystem stability and biodiversity as a result of human interventions over the last 200 years. What is also very clear is that human societies will be significantly impacted by these detrimental trends. Climate impacts coupled with poor environmental management practices associated with human development, especially in urban areas, are liable to cause widespread devastation in the coming decades. So far, efforts to organize a concerted global effort to mitigate these trends has proved meek and success elusive. I posit that a large part of the relative success and failure of specific countries is significantly tied to extant social capital dynamics within the country. Social capital expressed as trust and network integration and assimilation within the populace and with regard to their institutions likely has a dramatic effect on the country's success in ratification and implementation of environmental management and protection treaties negotiated in multilateral settings. I propose to study social capital trends and analyze levels against implementation progress and benchmark achievement.
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