The International Politics of the Environment: An Introduction

The International Politics of the Environment: An Introduction

Description

In addressing the international politics of the environment this book is concerned with the processes by which inter-state agreements on the environment are negotiated; with the rules and regimes established to facilitate environmental co-operation; with the international institutions that have been, or need to be, created to implement those rules; and with the conflicting political forces on whose resolution any successful regional or global environmental initiatives must depend. The global environmental issues discussed in this volume include climate change (chapters by Richardson, Beckerman, Cooper, Shue, Susskind and Ozawa, and Maull), ozone depletion (Bramble and Porter, and Maull), marine dumping (Stairs and Taylor), deforestation (Hurrell, Myers, and Bramble and Porter), and biodiversity (Myers). The objective is not to provide detailed scientific treatment of the nature of the major environmental challenges facing the world, but rather to explore the international political forces that work to complicate the negotiation and implementation of rational environmental policies between states, to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of various institutional mechanisms by which states have sought to co-operate in managing environmental problems, and to assess their relevance for the future. Underlying this analysis is a central question: Can a fragmented and often highly conflictual political system made up of over 170 sovereign states and numerous other actors achieve the high (and historically unprecedented) levels of co-operation and policy coordination needed to manage environmental problems on a global scale? The international dimensions of environmental problems have long been apparent, whether cross-border industrial pollution, the degradation of shared rivers, or the pollution of adjacent seas. Yet the scale and extent of these problems have increased dramatically as a result of the triple processes of population growth, rapid industrialization, and increased fossil fuel consumption. As one recent report points out: “Since 1900, the world's population has multiplied more than three times. Its economy has grown twentyfold. The consumption of fossil fuels has grown by a factor of 30, and industrial production by a factor of 50. Most of that growth, about four-fifths of it, occurred since 1950. Much of it is unsustainable.” The tremendous increase in the scale of human impact on the earth wrought by these developments, together with our increased, although still highly imperfect, understanding of ecological processes, means that the environment can no longer be viewed as a relatively stable background factor. Rather the interaction between continued economic development and the complex and often fragile ecosystems on which that development depends has become a major international political issue. Not only has the number and scope of transborder environmental problems increased, but a new category of global environmental issues has emerged; it is this global character that is the most distinctive feature of the present era. First, and most obviously, humanity is now faced by a range of environmental problems that are global in the strong sense that they affect everyone and can only be effectively managed on the basis of co-operation between all, or at least a very high percentage, of the states of the world: controlling climate change and the emission of greenhouse gases, the protection of the ozone layer, safeguarding biodiversity, protecting special regions such as Antarctica or the Amazon, the management of the sea-bed, and the protection of the high seas are among the principal examples. Second, the increasing scale of many originally regional or local environmental problems, such as extensive urban degradation, deforestation, desertification, salination, denudation, or water or fuel-wood scarcity, now threaten broader international repercussions: by undermining the economic base and social fabric of weak and poor states, by generating or exacerbating intra- or inter-state tensions and conflicts, and by stimulating increased flows of refugees. Environmental degradation in diverse parts of the developing or indeed the industrialized world can in this way come to affect the political and security interests of the developed countries. The third, and in many ways most important, aspect of increased globalization derives from the complex but close relationship between the generation of environmental problems and the workings of the now effectively globalized world economy. On the one hand, there is the range of environmental problems caused by the affluence of the industrialized countries; by the extent to which this affluence has been built upon high and unsustainable levels of energy consumption and natural resource depletion; and by the 'ecological shadow' cast by these economies across the economic system (a theme addressed by Hanns Maull in his chapter below). On the other, there is the widely recognized link between environmental degradation, population pressure, and poverty, given prominence in the Brundtland Report and at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Brazil and highlighted below in Peter Thacher's examination of the present and future roles of the UN system and in Norman Myers's discussion of the ‘shifted cultivator’. The environmental problems created by both affluence and poverty have focused attention on the need to develop new understandings of sustainable development and new mechanisms for implementing the shift towards sustainability. Sustainable development has become a global issue both because of the high levels of economic interdependence that exist within many parts of the global economy and because it raises fundamental questions concerning the distribution of wealth, power, and resources between North and South.

Source Publication

The International Politics of the Environment: Actors, Interests, and Institutions

Source Editors/Authors

Andrew Hurrell, Benedict Kingsbury

Publication Date

1992

The International Politics of the Environment: An Introduction

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