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ESPM 169 August 29, 2002
The Emergence of International Environmental Politics
Things to discuss:
- many components to course
- go over readings availability
- space in class
- sections
- first assignment - reading reviews
- WSSD; library session
- sign-up sheet
-reading for next time
a. What is IEP?
- the study of political causes of international environmental problems and of the political mechanisms to solve them.
Top Points Today
- history
- types of issues
Terms:
commons, transboundary, local cumulative issues;
Stockholm 1972; Rio 1992; Johannesburg, 2002
Table: from JR McNeill - something New Under the Sun
- what does it show us? (macro trends; resource use; energy production; population increase; increase in agriculture; big changes over last century)
b. Why has IEP become an important issue?
- growing sense of ecological crisis: environmental crises (e.g. discovery of the hole in the ozone layer; Chernobyl); growing awareness of a changing climate; alarming figures regarding the rate of species loss and resource depletion
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, several factors contributed to the growth of international environmental concern:
- in some ways, a result of political activism and concern - also visible damage, global science, plus an act of collective imagination (sometimes deceptive, as it masks very different perceptions)
1. pictures of the earth from space
2. Social and protest movements of the 1960s - peace and environmental
3. Defrosting of Cold War politics and the rise of the UN system
4. Very visible evidence of transboundary problems: acid rain in Northern Europe; OPEC oil embargo
- Questioning of dominant "growth is good" paradigm; limits to growth, tragedy of the commons, "think global, act local"
- changes in development theory
c. The international response
- a large number of international treaties which seek to regulate state behavior with respect to the environment: according to the World Resources Institute, there are over 170 environmental treaties in effect
- and more, depending on measures: 200-900 - 33,000 environmental provisions in international law (Vig and Axelrod)
d. The nature of the problems:
An environmental problem takes on an international aspect when the effects of the pollution are felt in more than one state. There are three ways in which this might happen:
- Issues such as global warming and ozone depletion: involve pollution of the “global commons”: i.e. resources that are outside the control of any one country, and therefore allow open access to all, e.g. the atmosphere and the oceans - carbon dioxide takes only a year to circulate through the atmosphere
- Issues such as acid rain and river pollution: when they cross national frontiers, they become transboundary environmental issues; e.g. US and Canada; Western Europe
- Shared resources
- Externalities (pollution generated in one country reaches another)
- Issues such as population growth, or deforestation: these occur within national boundaries, but their effects are cumulative, and are felt all over the world.
where does BD fit in?
- in some sense, a "global commons" issue; in others, a local cumulative issue