Content area
Abstract
This article examines subnational governments role in global environmental governance. With such an end, the article considers the characteristics that make subnational governments relevant actors in the promotion of sustainable development and the ways in which the Zero Dra of the outcome document of Rio+20 engages these actors in the institutional framework for sustainable development. Considering the emergence of subnational governments and their horizontal networks in global environmental governance, the article examines the activities of the Network of Regional Governments for Sustainable Development (nrg4SD), since its creation, ten years ago, to its position in relation to the Zero Dra. The article suggests that environmental paradiplomacy can play an increasingly relevant role in the institutional framework that will be needed for sustainable development. First because the problems that aect the world in the present require answers from multiple actors, in multiple scales, having subnational governments the crucial role of developing and implementing policies at citizens level. Second, because in order to achieve global environmental governance, subnational governments must be recognised as governmental stakeholders among the actors responsible for the international decision-making process.