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International biodiversity law, while exhibiting a high degree of institutional development, is both fragmented and ineffective at preventing mass extinction. Recognizing that fragmentation can undermine regulatory efforts, a number of scholars have advocated greater institutional linkage leading to a more unified legal structure as a path to improving effectiveness, in the context of biodiversity law and elsewhere.
This article finds institutional linkage unlikely to advance biodiversity protection in the near term and, therefore, argues that it should not be a major focus of reform efforts. Formal efforts to integrate international biodiversity law appear likely to face significant political obstacles and delay development of effective regulatory strategies. More fundamentally, unified international governance may be ill-suited to address the varied drivers underlying the extinction crisis, which require regulation at the local, national, and international level. Read More
