Environmental Issues
Introduction
The current use and degradation of the earth's resources is unsustainable and closely
connected in sometimes contradictory ways to the processes of globalization.
There are vast inequalities between rich and poor in their use of the earth's resources and
in the ecological shadow or footprint that they impose on it.
The response at the international level is to attempt to provide global environmental
governance. In a system of sovereign states, this involves international cooperation.
Environmental issues on the international agenda: a Brief History
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, international environmental politics
was strictly limited, but from around 1960 its scope expanded as environmental problems
acquired a transnational and then a global dimension.
The process was reflected in and stimulated by the three great UN conferences of 1972,
1992, and 2002, whose most important role was to make the connection between the
international environmental and development agendas, as expressed in the important
concept of sustainable development.
International environmental politics reflected the issue-attention cycle in developed
countries and relied heavily on increasing scientific knowledge.
The functions of international environmental cooperation
Trans-boundary Trade and Pollution Control
Norm Creation
Aid and Capacity Building
Scientific Understanding
Governing the Commons
International environmental meetings serve several political objectives alongside
environmental aims.
A key function of international cooperation is trans-boundary regulation, but attempts at
environmental action may conflict with the rules of the world trade regime.
International action is needed to promote environmental norms, develop scientific
understanding, and assist the participation of developing countries.
International cooperation is necessary to provide governance regimes for the global
commons.
The Montreal Protocol and stratospheric ozone regime
The thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer arose from previously unsuspected source-artificial
chemicals containing fluorine, chlorine, and bromine, which were involved in chemical reaction
with ozone molecules at high altitudes. Most significant were the CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons),
which were developed in the 1920s as 'safe' inert industrial gases and which had been blithely
produced and used over the next fifty years for a whole variety of purposes, from refrigeration to
air-conditioning and as propellants for hairspray. There was no universal agreement on the
dangers posed by these chemicals and production and use continued-except, significantly, where
the US Congress decided to ban some non-essential uses. This meant that the US chemical
industry found itself under a costly obligation to find alternatives. As evidence on the problem
began to mount, UNEP convened an international conference in Vienna. It produced a
'framework convention' agreeing that international action might be required and that the parties
should continue to communicate and develop and exchange scientific findings. These proved to
be very persuasive, particularly with the added public impetus provided by the dramatic
discovery of the Antarctic 'ozone hole'.
Unlike the ozone layer problem, climate change and the enhanced greenhouse effect had long
been debated among scientists, but only in the late 1980s did sufficient international consensus
emerge to stimulate action. There were still serious disagreements over the likelihood that
human-induced changes in mean temperatures were altering the global climate system. The
greenhouse effect is essential to life on earth. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere
insulate the earth's surface by trapping solar radiation. Before the Industrial Revolution, carbon
dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were around 280 parts per million, and have since
grown continuously (to a 2011 figure of 391 ppm) due to burning of fossil fuels and reductions
in some of the 'sinks' for carbon dioxide-notably forests. Methane emissions have also risen with
the growth of agriculture.
Within two years the parties agreed to a Protocol under which the production and trading of
CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances would be progressively phased out. The developed
countries achieved this for CFCs by 1996 and Meetings of the Parties (MoP) have continued to
work on the elimination of other substances since that time. There was some initial resistance
from European chemical producers, but the US side had a real incentive to ensure international
agreement because otherwise its chemical industry would remain at a commercial disadvantage.
The other problem faced by the negotiators involved developing countries, which themselves
was manufacturing CFC products. They were compensated by a fund, set up in 1990, to finance
the provision of alternative non-CFC technologies for the developing world.
The damage to the ozone layer will not be repaired until the latter part of the twenty-first century,
given the long atmospheric lifetimes of the chemicals involved. However, human behaviour has
been significantly altered to the extent that the scientific subsidiary body of the Montreal
Protocol has been able to report a measurable reduction in the atmospheric concentration of
CFCs.
Climate change
Climate Change, because of its all-embracing nature and its roots in essential human
activities, poses an enormous challenge for international cooperation.
A limited start was made with the Kyoto regime, but this was undermined by the absence
of the USA. Although the 2009 Copenhagen Conference was a disappointment to climate
activists, the 2011 Durban Platform held out the possibility that North-South differences
might be resolved in a new comprehensive climate agreement.
Case study 1 : common but differentiated responsibilities?
A key principle of the climate change regime, written into the 1992 UNFCCC, was the notion of
'common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities'. This meant that although
all nations had to accept responsibility for the world's changing climate, it was developed (Annex
1) nations that were immediately responsible because they had benefited from the
industrialization which was generally regarded as the source of the excess carbon dioxide
emissions that had caused mean temperature increases.
In the 1990s, the USA emitted around 25 per cent of the global total but had only 4.5 per cent of
global population. Chinese figures were 14 per cent but with over 20 per cent of the world's
population, while the thirty-five least-developed nations emitted under 1 per cent. Under the
Kyoto Protocol the developed countries were expected to make emissions cuts.
However, by 2004 it was clear that an effective post-2012 regime would have to involve the fast-
growing economies of the South because their 'respective capabilities' had changed. In terms of
current C02 emissions in 2011, six countries were responsible for over 70 per cent of the world
total: China 29 per cent, US 16 per cent, EU 11 per cent, India 6 per cent, Russia 5 per cent, and
Japan 4 per cent. Finding a new basis for an equitable sharing of necessary emissions reductions
is fraught with problems: (1) Because GHGs have long and variable atmospheric lifetimes, from
thirty up to at least a hundred years, past emissions must also be taken into account. Thus
developing countries can argue that most of the allowable 'carbon space' has already been taken
up by the historic emissions of the old industrialized economies and that the latter should,
therefore, continue to take the lead. (2) Per capita emissions still vary widely between Northern
and Southern economies. Treating them in the same way cannot be either just or politically
acceptable. (3) A major part of current Chinese emissions are the direct result of the transfer of
production of goods from the US and Europe. Who, therefore, bears the responsibility?
Case Study 2: the Alliance of Small Island States
There are a number of key coalitions that operate in climate diplomacy, including the Umbrella
Group of non-EU developed countries, the Environmental Integrity Group, which includes
Switzerland, South Korea, and Mexico, and the Group of 77 /China, which has long attempted to
represent the South in global negot1at1ons. Because of the widening differences between its
members, the G77 /China often fractures into the BASIC countries, the fossil fuel exporters, less-
developed mainly African countries, and AOSIS. The Alliance has played a disproportionately
large role. Set up in 1990, its forty-four members may only represent about 5 per cent of world
population but they are driven by an awareness that national survival is at stake. For members
such as Nauru, Tuvalu, or Vanuatu, the sea level rise associated with climate change threatens
inundation within the foreseeable future. AOSIS is an 'ad hoe lobby and negotiating voice'
coordinated through the UN missions of its members. It was influential in the initial decision to
set up the Kyoto Protocol and has agitated consistently for a l .5°C rather than a 2°C threshold
plus compensatory arrangements for loss and damage caused by climate change. After the
Copenhagen CoP in 2009 AOSIS was involved with the EU, Australia, and a range of other
progressive and less-developed countries in setting up the Cartagena Dialogue. This provided a
diplomatic basis for the Durban Platform agreed in 2011.
The Environment and the International Relations Theory
The environment has been a growth area for IR scholars interested in identifying the
conditions under which effective international cooperation can emerge.
Scholars differ in the importance that they attach to various kinds of explanatory factors
in their analyses of international environmental regime-building activities crude
calculations of the power and interests of key actors such as states, cognitive factors such
as shared scientific knowledge, the impact of non-governmental actors, and even the
extent to which the system of states is itself part of the problem.
IR scholars are also interested in the extent to which the environment in general and
particular environmental problems are now being seen as security issues in academic,
political, and popular discourse, and whether this securitization of the environment is
something to be welcomed.
Conclusion
The rise to prominence of environmental issues is intimately associated with globalization due to
the strain that this places on the earth's carrying capacity in terms of consumption levels,
resource depletion, and rising greenhouse gas emissions.
Globalization has also facilitated the growth of transnational green politics and interventions by
NGOs to raise public awareness, influence international conferences, and even monitor the
implementation of agreements by states. At every stage, two distinctive aspects of international
environmental politics have played a central role. The first is the complex relationship between
scientific understanding of the biosphere, politics, and policy, as exemplified by the interplay
between the IPCC and the actions of governments building the climate regime. The second is the
connection between environment and development, which has been expressed in the shifting
meanings given to the concept of sustainable development and whose acknowledgement has
been a precondition for international action on a whole range of environmental issues. Nowhere
is this more evident than in debates about the future direction of the climate regime.
The international response to environmental change has been in the form of attempts to arrange
global environmental governance through extensive cooperation between governments. This
chapter has attempted to provide some insight into the range and functions of such regime-
creating activities, which provide a basis on which the international community is attempting to
grapple with the climate problem. The academic community has generally followed this
enterprise by concentrating on the question of how regimes may be formed and sustained. More
critical theorists will take a different view of the meaning of international cooperation.
Furthermore, the challenges posed to international theory by the global environmental
predicament will undoubtedly involve the need to think through the connections between
security, climate change, and globalization.
