Environmental issues increasingly demonstrate local-global linkages in driving forces and effects. Policy responses are initiated at local, national and global levels. The successful management of such cross-level environmental issues involves co-ordinated and co-operative policies and action among stakeholders at several levels of governance. Pesticide use in the South-which is a potential driving force for environmental and health problems-has in this dissertation been analysed in relation to such multilayered governance. The theoretical framework from studies on common property resource (CPR) management is applied, facilitating the cross-level analysis of pesticide use in the South as being a global common. The study looks into problem structuring, risk reduction policies and decisionmaking with respect to pesticide use in the South at the local, national and global levels, with Kenya and Costa Rica as cases for the national and local levels. The degree of common understanding among stakeholders across governance levels on what the problems with pesticide use in the South are and how the problems should be addressed and why, is limited but not entirely absent. Mismatches ininformation flows and knowledge, institutions, and values between governance levels hamper the prospect of establishing multilayered governance. These mismatches can be addressed by giving more attention to the level at which institutions are functional, by involving more stakeholders in the generation of knowledge, and by adopting more inclusive values. One approach to achieve these required changes is to embrace a systems perspective on this issue as a global common, a global environmental concern.