Y TRANSBOUNDARY ENVIRONMENTAL NEGOTIATION New Approaches to Global Cooperation EDITED BY
Lawrence Susskind William Moomaw Kevin Gallagher
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TRANSBOUNDARY ENVIRONMENTAL NEGOTIATION
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Y TRANSBOUNDARY ENVIRONMENTAL NEGOTIATION New Approaches to Global Cooperation EDITED BY
Lawrence Susskind William Moomaw Kevin Gallagher
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Published by
Copyright © 2002 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jossey-Bass is a registered trademark of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4744. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012, (212) 850-6011, fax (212) 850-6008, e-mail:
[email protected]. Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly, call (888) 378-2537, fax to (800) 605-2665, or visit our website at www.josseybass.com. Substantial discounts on bulk quantities of Jossey-Bass books are available to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details and discount information, contact the special sales department at Jossey-Bass. We at Jossey-Bass strive to use the most environmentally sensitive paper stocks available to us. Our publications are printed on acid-free recycled stock whenever possible, and our paper always meets or exceeds minimum GPO and EPA requirements. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Transboundary environmental negotiation : new approaches to global cooperation / edited by Lawrence Susskind, William Moomaw, Kevin Gallagher. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7879-6061-6 1. Environmental law, International. 2. Environmental policy—International cooperation. 3. Negotiation. I. Susskind, Lawrence. II. Moomaw, William, 1938- III. Gallagher, Kevin, 1968K3585.T73 2002 341.7'62—dc21
2002023595
CONTENTS
Introduction
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About the Contributors
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PART ONE: RESHAPING ATTITUDES: THE NEED TO RETHINK THE BASIS FOR GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION 1 1 Defining the “Common Heritage of Mankind”
3
Ari Nathan
2 All Commons Are Local: The Antarctic Treaty System as a Regional Model for Effective Environmental Management 24 Gianfranco Corti
3 International Environmental Negotiation: A Strategy for the South 41 Adil Najam
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PART TWO: A SHIFTING CAST OF CHARACTERS: BEYOND THE STATE AS UNITARY ACTOR 83 4 Voluntary Codes of Management: New Opportunities for Increased Corporate Accountability 85 Anne M. Weiss
5 Science and Scientists in International Environmental Negotiations 107 Laurent Renevier and Mark Henderson
6 Science and Economics in Climate Change and Other International Environmental Negotiations 130 Peter Zapfel
7 Promoting North-South NGO Collaboration in Environmental Negotiations: The Role of U.S. Foundations 154 Wendy Gay Vanasselt
8 The Role of the Media in Environmental Issues: Newspaper Coverage in Four Countries 172 Anja Kollmuss
PART THREE: New Tools and Arrangements: Adding Elements to the Treaty-Making System 201 9 Integrating Information Technology into Environmental Treaty Making 205 Tobin L. Freid and Imke Wesseloh
10 Enforcing International Environmental Treaties in Domestic Legal Systems 230 David W. Bowker and Michael Castellano
11 Capacity-Building Strategies in Support of Multilateral Environmental Agreements 252 Heike Mainhardt
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PART FOUR: POSSIBLE NEW TREATIES: UTILIZING THE ELEMENTS OF A NEW SYSTEM 277 12 Global Treaty on Renewable Energy
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Fredric A. Beck
13 A Proposal for an Environmental Right-to-Know Convention: Negotiating the Barriers 304 John Harrison
14 The Global Nitrogen Initiative: An Opportunity for Sustainable Development and Global Change 335 James F. Perkaus
15 A Proposed International Framework Convention on Bioinvasive Species 361 Wendy M. Jastremski
16 Harder than Physics: Negotiating an International Regime to Limit Transboundary Consequences of Nuclear Waste Disposal 376 Marcus Dubois King
PART FIVE: GAUGING THE SUCCESS OF A MORE INTEGRATIVE SYSTEM 393 17 Linking Human Rights and Environmental Quality
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Kristi N. Rea
18 The Potential for Environmental Contributions to Peace Maria Fariello Laux
Bibliography
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Name Index
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Subject Index
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414
Introduction
ore than 150 international environmental treaties have been adopted since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment first drew global attention to the dangers of transboundary pollution and rapid resource depletion. The elements of a makeshift international environmental treaty-making system have been pieced together, but it is woefully inadequate. A preliminary analysis of these weaknesses first appeared in Susskind’s Environmental Diplomacy (Oxford University Press 1995). The system as it stands tends to produce treaties that inevitably fall short of their overly ambitious objectives. This volume includes 18 chapters further analyzing the weaknesses of this system and sketching the changes in global environmental treaty making required to generate agreements that will actually reverse the damage that unsustainable development practices have caused.
M
The Key Assumptions Underlying the Global Environmental Treaty-Making System According to the conventional wisdom, treaties are agreements among countries made by the leaders of those countries, usually because they have something to gain by accepting certain constraints on their actions. Such accords are voluntary—countries are free to sign or not. Since the early 1990s, the pattern has been for countries to agree upon general statements of commitment to broad xi
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goals, or what are called conventions. Over time, these have been followed by protocols, or more specific agreements spelling out detailed obligations. Small professional secretariats, selected by the signatory countries (that is Committee of the Parties), staff the agreements. Whatever money there is to support the work of the secretariats or to underwrite implementation must come from the parties themselves. In general, global environmental agreements seek to reverse the tide or alter some pattern of development that is depleting a valuable resource or creating unsustainable levels of pollution. It is unlikely that any global agreement has ever repaired or reversed the damage toward which it is directed. The initiative for pursuing such accords usually comes from a multilateral agency (like the United Nations Environment Program) or the General Assembly of the United Nations. Those who wish to meet, do so. When they can agree on the language of a convention, they adopt it and wait for countries wishing to join to formally ratify it. Few, if any, agreements incorporate formal mechanisms to ensure implementation. The embarrassment of not living up to agreements, however, and the bad reputation that such behavior would create, is usually enough to encourage most countries to abide by the agreements they sign. In the system described above, there is no formal role for nongovernmental organizations. There is no rule book indicating how many countries must ratify a global agreement before it comes into force; what the penalties for noncompliance are; what countries must do to ensure that their national laws conform to the agreements they have signed; or what kinds of scientific evidence must be in hand to justify action. The mechanics of international law which govern global interaction are notoriously inexplicit and practically impossible to enforce. There is no entity with responsibility for ensuring that progress is monitored or that the more than 180 nations of the world learn from their ongoing experience.
Rethinking the System The chapters in this volume are divided into five sections. The first three discuss the need for changes in attitudes, actors, and treaty-making arrangements required to lay a foundation for more effective environmental treaty making. The fourth section identifies a number of transboundary environmental problems that merit global attention and that could be negotiated more effectively if a new treatymaking system were in place. The volume closes with a discussion of some ways of gauging whether the approach to treaty making we have in mind is working more effectively.
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Reshaping Attitudes: The Need to Rethink the Basis for Global Environmental Action Ari Nathan argues that the Common Heritage of Mankind (CHM) is increasingly important as the interconnected nature of the global ecology becomes increasingly apparent. While the idea that natural resources and life-support systems belong to all mankind was raised almost 150 years ago by John Stuart Mill, specific legal rights associated with this inheritance have yet to be defined. While certain normative principles are embedded in soft law (and have become hard law in a variety of ways), Nathan emphasizes the need to define CHM much more specifically. He outlines three alternative conceptions of CHM and uses the threat of climate change as a device to tease out the practical implications of choosing one conception of CHM over the others. In the end, he suggests a blend of the three: fair and egalitarian distribution; stewardship and intergenerational sustainability; and economical, efficient, and functional use of resources. Unless a different attitude toward CHM underlies global environmental treaty making, the system will always fall short. Gianfranco Corti argues that a true commons is best looked after by those who share an immediate, well-defined interest in it and who will incur costs by neglecting it. These like-minded shareholders need not agree on other issues. The case Corti offers is the Antarctic Treaty System, which from its inception in 1959 included stakeholders notoriously at odds with each other, that is the United States and the Soviet Union. The Antarctic treaties, like other international agreements, operate on the basis of consensus and voluntary cooperation. They have weathered the usual difficulties of international policy making and administration, and have functioned reasonably well. The Antarctic Treaty System has also managed to grow, change, and add other nations as they have been able to meet the criteria for membership. Corti points out that the success of the Antarctic Commons supports the case for the viability of other decentralized environmental regimes. He distills six characteristics of such alliances, including the well-studied Mediterranean Action Plan. Groups working to support a commons should be issue-oriented. Membership should be determined by a litmus test or membership fee that signals a serious commitment. Such groups should be open to all applicants who meet the criteria, regardless of geopolitical affiliation. Group decision making should be transparent and accountable. Policies should be based on impartial and complete fact-finding. Group rules should depend on self-enforcement, fostered by a sense of corporate responsibility. A shift in attitude is required—away from concerted global action (one set of rules fits all) to a linked set of decentralized alliances.
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Corti’s vision of global environmental management conjures up not a global village, but a series of well-governed neighborhoods, each tending to its own commons. Corti concludes, “Our neighbors are not necessarily our best friends . . . but nonetheless, it is among neighbors—not strangers or friends—that decentralized collective action works best.” Underlying most analyses of the success or failure of global environmental agreements is a growing sense that the fundamental breach between the North and the South has worsened. Unless some accommodation can be reached, each environmental treaty will be weakened and ultimately threatened by this clash of competing demands. The South demands reparations for the environmental damage caused by the industrialized countries. The North refuses to acknowledge that the development path it is on is unsustainable and is unwilling to make significant changes. Adil Najam offers a message to the South: “Stop feeling angry at the North and sorry for yourself.” Najam urges the South to adopt a more pragmatic strategy in international environmental treaty making—one based on the lessons of negotiation theory rather than “five hundred years of accumulated anger.” Changes in attitudes on the part of both the North and South will be required, not just towards each other, but towards the need for better management of transboundary environmental impacts and resources.
A Shifting Cast of Characters: Beyond the State as Unitary Actor It is painfully obvious, although the leadership in many countries would not necessarily agree, that more effective management of global environmental resources will involve the full participation of a range of nonstate actors. We are particularly interested in the roles that corporations, the scientific community, NGOs, foundations, and media ought to play. Recognizing that transnational corporations play a major role in the creation of international environmental problems and their solutions, Anne M. Weiss examines voluntary codes of environmental conduct that might make corporations more accountable for their actions. She demonstrates that such codes have the potential to improve the level of auditing and reporting of environmental problems, and to influence corporate management practices—in some instances more effectively than global treaties might. More significantly, as they become incorporated into domestic law, the elements of these codes can influence political agreements at national and international levels, perhaps leading to the development of tougher global standards and more ambitious expectations. Hence, action taken by leading companies engaged in creating voluntary standards can effect
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broader changes in corporate environmental practices on a worldwide basis. While voluntary codes aimed at regulating corporate conduct vis-à-vis the environment are not a substitute for global treaties, they are an important complement and could well provide support for stronger transboundary regulation than might otherwise be negotiated by official national representatives operating on their own. Laurent Renevier and Mark Henderson write about the ways in which scientists participate in international environmental negotiations, challenging the myth of objectivity that traditionally surrounds the involvement of scientists. They call for an “infusion of politics back into science.” In seeking to improve the balance between science and politics, they describe the ways in which biases ought to be made clear, leading to a more judicious use of science, and, therefore, to better environmental treaties. While achieving the proper balance between science and politics (and avoiding what is commonly known as instructed science) will not be easy, it may be the key to involving scientific institutions in global environmental treaty making in a more effective way. Peter Zapfel also looks at the way that scientists are currently participating in international environmental negotiations. Zapfel surveyed some of the 2500 scientists participating on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to determine their awareness of some of the dilemmas surrounding the integration of science and policy making. He designed several questions to determine the scientists’ view of the significance of economic analysis in climate change negotiations. Based on his findings, Zapfel makes several recommendations, including a call for what he dubs Science-Policy Interaction Panels (SPIPs). Wendy Gay Vanasselt calls upon another international actor to help forge stronger international environmental agreements: U.S. foundations. These groups have the monetary and institutional resources to broker alliances between northern and southern NGOs. Vanasselt suggests that well-placed foundation interventions could add credibility that might generate the support of influential institutions that have remained on the sidelines to date in a great many global treaty negotiations. She also argues that foundations, unencumbered by the exigencies of internal national politics, have the independence to take the long view required to meet global environmental challenges. An additional player in global environmental treaty making is the media. In an analysis of newspaper coverage of the climate change issue in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and India, Anja Kollmuss examines the mixed messages that have come from the media on this issue. Kollmuss finds that the way in which risks associated with climate change are framed is a direct result of the particular political orientation of the newspapers involved. As a result, newspapers act as de facto parties in the negotiating process (by shaping the interests and opinions of other actors involved), rather than as an educative force.
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Each of these non-governmental actors ought to have a clear role in the global environmental treaty-making system.
New Tools and Arrangements: Adding Elements to the Treaty-Making System Adding additional actors, particularly nonstate actors, will complicate matters. It will not be easy to create settings in which representatives are encouraged to take seriously what others have to say. Most official delegates to global treaty negotiations arrive with carefully worded scripts to read and little or no negotiating flexibility. Getting the necessary technical information into the hands of all participants in multilateral negotiations is practically impossible. Institutional treatymaking capacity needs to be enhanced at the national, regional, and global levels. Tobin L. Fried and Imke Wesseloh show how information technology can help parties prepare for negotiations; provide a forum for the generation of more effective treaty options; allow more direct observation and participation by nonnegotiators; afford negotiators the opportunity to communicate among official negotiations in different spheres; and enhance post-negotiation implementation. They point to real-life examples of successful uses of information technology in negotiations to illustrate that many of the likely challenges can be overcome. David W. Bowker and Michael Castellano examine the current weaknesses of the enforcement and monitoring mechanisms in most international environmental treaties and propose a regime to improve them. Existing systems commonly suffer from deficits of authority, funding, monitoring, and data gathering; inadequate roles for NGOs; and a lack of effectiveness in attaining stated environmental goals. They outline a proposal to bolster the ability of treaty regimes to promulgate their goals, using existing resources and organizations more efficiently. Their basic idea is that all treaties should require each party to allow individuals and non-governmental actors the right to sue in national courts for enforcement of global treaties. The creation of individual rights under international treaties is a familiar concept. However, the environmental application raises some unique issues. For example, the idea of who may be an interested party must be expanded. National laws will have to be harmonized. An appeals process must be organized. For each possible barrier, Bowker and Castellano cite precedents, and, more importantly, jurisdictions in which these problems are being solved. Heike Mainhardt addresses the capacity-building question—how to improve the negotiating capabilities of national governments. She cites capacity building as a problem in both negotiating and implementing treaties. In addition to
Introduction
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outlining a proposal for a Capacity Building Management Unit linking conventions and the private sector, she offers capacity-building indicators that could be used to monitor progress. Each of these new or modified elements of the global treaty-making system could help improve the chances of actually reversing environmental damage and unsustainable practices that require transboundary attention.
Possible New Treaties: Utilizing the Elements of a New System If the changes in the treaty-making system described in the previous pages were in place, it would be much easier to take on some of the transboundary environmental problems that have not yet been addressed at the global environmental treaty-making level. In outlining a Global Treaty on Renewable Energy, Fredric A. Beck encourages the incorporation of industrial concerns, input from the scientific community, and the informational and organizational capacities of NGOs to define linkages between the need for greenhouse gas reduction, trade liberalization, economic development goals, and the contributions that renewal energy can make to all three of these objectives. Beck’s proposal would involve no new organizations; instead, an ad hoc international forum would be created to involve all appropriate existing organizations. Beck is particularly persuasive in arguing the reasons why a renewable energy initiative should be international in scope. He suggests an initiative involving several separate treaties and agreements, coordinated to the greatest extent possible. John Harrison grapples with another issue complicated by differences in national policies and values. He proposes an Environmental Right-to-Know Convention (ERIK) with the objective of securing the greatest possible freedom of access to information held by nation states. Harrison argues that robust environmental protection measures, both locally and globally, must be based on the most complete information possible, widely distributed and subject to comment. Furthermore, he believes, access to environmental information will make it more likely that decision makers will consider the environmental dimensions of all kinds of policy. In detailing the possible barriers to his proposed convention, Harrison acknowledges that national and private interests are likely to feel threatened; conventional patterns of domestic policy making might be disrupted; many countries lack the administrative capacity to comply with a large volume of requests for information; and domestic supporters of the convention may be opposed by other holders of information who favor restrictions on access to
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environmental information. Anticipating these concerns, Harrison offers several possible strategies for meeting them. James F. Perkaus argues that the time is ripe to mobilize emerging global concern about significant alterations in the global nitrogen cycle caused by human activity. Disruptions of the nitrogen cycle could have important consequences for biological diversity and ecosystem services, effects potentially as large as the well-recognized impacts of anthropogenic change in the carbon cycle. Perkaus explores ten reasons why the nitrogen cycle deserves more international attention than it has received. He proposes a comprehensive program, the Global Nitrogen Initiative (GNI), for coping with the broad range of management problems involved. While economic globalization has spawned an elaborate regime to monitor global trade and investment flows, no such mechanisms exist to govern the ecological globalization of species unintentionally transported by global economic activity. Wendy M. Jastremski notes that international shipping alone accounts for the movement of approximately 10,000 species each day in water contained in ship ballast. Invading foreign species can pose great danger to host ecosystems. Jastremski outlines an International Framework Convention on Bio-invasive Species to deal with such threats. Marcus Dubois King suggests that there is a need for a new international regime to limit and guide nuclear waste disposal around the world. Noting that there are more than 150,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel accumulated at globally distributed reactor sites, King proposes a regime to balance the conflicting interests of national governments, the global nuclear industry, and non-governmental organizations with a stake in nuclear waste disposal.
Gauging the Success of a More Integrated System There are some obvious ways in which the success of such treaty regimes might be measured. If a treaty spells out specific objectives, then progress toward meeting those goals could be tracked. However, most global environmental accords are vague with regard to timelines and specific country obligations. If an environmental problem addressed by a treaty only worsens, even though countries do what is required of them, it is difficult to say whether the treaty should be judged effective or not. Also, if most countries do what is required, but a few large (misbehaving) countries refuse to join the treaty regime, it would be hard to judge the treaty itself a failure.
Introduction
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A more effective global environmental treaty-making system would not only produce agreements that halt unsustainable development practices and repair the damage they have caused, but would also work to achieve other international objectives at the same time. For instance, it may be possible to achieve more sustainable resource management practices while simultaneously enforcing human rights guarantees. It might also be possible to shape transboundary environmental treaty-making efforts in ways that contribute to broader peacemaking initiatives. Thus, merely meeting the stated objectives of a treaty is an insufficient indicator of success. Kristi N. Rea argues that environmental issues, particularly those related to human health, can and should actually be addressed within the context of international human rights. She proposes that instead of looking toward the International Court of Justice (which has an extremely narrow mandate vis-à-vis the environment), environmental activists ought look toward the U.N. Human Rights Convention as an avenue for addressing environmental claims. She is optimistic about establishing a link between environmental quality and the right to life guaranteed under the International Human Rights regime. This intertwining of human rights guarantees and environmental objectives would, she believes, strengthen the efforts to achieve both. Maria Fariello Laux shows how there can be room for environmental cooperation among enemies. She argues that certain environmental issues, which are not necessarily related to questions of immediate national security, may prompt the creation of forums within which trust can be nurtured, even in the context of antagonistic relationships. She concludes that the roles played by non-governmental organizations and international organizations (like UNEP) are key to adding environmental efforts to the confidence-building agendas of long-term peacemaking projects.
Conclusion Global efforts to manage resources more wisely and to reverse the severe environmental damage caused by past development practices are still in their infancy. The rudimentary system currently in place for generating transboundary agreements concerning resource management, pollution reduction, and sustainable development needs to be strengthened. This can best be accomplished by clarifying underlying global responsibilities for environmental protection and adjusting attitudes accordingly, widening the circle of participants in the treaty-making
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process, and modifying the institutional arrangements or assignment of responsibilities among these actors and institutions. If these steps are taken, it will be possible to address some of the global concerns that have not yet been the subject of multilateral treaty making. Greater success in environmental treaty making will mean not only progress in reversing the damage we currently face, but movement in the right direction on a whole series of fronts of equal or even greater importance. It could extend, for example, to the protection of human rights or fragile peacemaking efforts in many corners of the world.
Prior Publication Each chapter in this volume originally appeared in an issue of the annual series, Papers on International Environmental Negotiation, edited by Professor Lawrence Susskind, Professor William Moomaw, and others over the past decade. The series, now in its eleventh year, is published by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. The chapters presented here have not been revised to reflect historic change subsequent to their original publication, for two reasons. First, each discusses issues of major significance at a specific time in the evolution of environmental thought and politics. The arguments, references, and language are integrally related to that milieu. Second, each reflects a principle in environmental decision making that the editors consider universal—applicable not just at the time the authors were writing but also to the ongoing development of this field. In addition, each principle illustrated in this volume is a robust, adaptable, and well-tested contribution to global cooperation on the impact of human life on local, regional, and global environments. Defining the “Common Heritage of Mankind”; Ari Nathan; Global Environment: Negotiating Its Future (Volume 7, 1998) All Commons Are Local: The Antarctic Treaty System as a Regional Model for Effective Environmental Management; Gianfranco Corti; Innovations in International Environmental Negotiation (Volume 6, 1997) International Environmental Negotiation: A Strategy for the South; Adil Najam; Papers on International Negotiation (Volume 3, 1993) Voluntary Codes of Management: New Opportunities for Increased Corporate Accountability; Anne Gelfand Weiss; Papers on International Environmental Negotiation (Volume 5, 1995) Science and Scientists in International Environmental Negotiations; Laurent Renevier and Mark Henderson; Papers on International Environmental Negotiation (Volume 4, 1994)
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Science and Economics in Climate Change and Other International Environmental Negotiations; Peter Zapfel; Global Environment: Negotiating its Future (Volume 7, 1998) Promoting North-South NGO Collaboration in Environmental Negotiations: The Role of U.S. Foundations; Wendy Gay Vanasselt; New Directions in International Environmental Negotiation (Volume 9, 1999) The Role of the Media in Addressing International Environmental Problems; Anja Kollmuss; Reforming the International Environmental Treaty-Making System (Volume 10, 2001) Revolutionizing International Negotiations: Making Information Technology an Integral Part of Environmental Treaty-Making; Tobin L. Freid and Imke Wesseloh; International Environmental Negotiation: An Integrative Approach (Volume 9, 2000) Enforcing International Environmental Treaties in Domestic Legal Systems; David W. Bowker and Michael Castellano; Innovations in International Environmental Negotiation (Volume 6, 1997) Capacity Building Strategies in Support of Multilateral Environmental Agreements; Heike Mainhardt; Reforming the International Environmental Treaty-Making System (Volume 10, 2001) Global Treaty on Renewable Energy; Fredric A. Beck; Global Environment: Negotiating its Future (Volume 7, 1998) A Proposal for an Environmental Right-to-Know Convention: Negotiating the Barriers; John Harrison; Innovations in International Environmental Negotiation (Volume 6, 1997) The Global Nitrogen Initiative: An Opportunity for Sustainable Development and Global Change; James Perkaus; Global Environment: Negotiating its Future (Volume 7, 1998) A Proposed International Framework for Bio-Invasive Species; Wendy M. Jastremski; Reforming the International Environmental Treaty-Making System (Volume 10, 2001) Harder than Physics: Negotiating an International Regime to Limit Transboundary Consequences of Nuclear Waste Disposal; Marcus Dubois King; Reforming the International Environmental Treaty-Making System (Volume 10, 2001) Linking Human Rights and Environmental Quality; Kristi N. Rea; Papers on International Environmental Negotiation (Volume 4, 1994) The Potential for Environmental Contributions to Peace; Maria Fariello; International Environmental Negotiation: An Integrative Approach (Volume 9, 2000)
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About the Contributors
The Editors Lawrence E. Susskind is Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and Vice-Chair for Instruction at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Professor Susskind is also founder of the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a not-for-profit organization that provides mediation services in complicated public disputes around the world. William Moomaw is Professor of International Environmental Policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University where he directs the International Environmental and Resource Program. He is also director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts. He holds a doctorate in physical chemistry and his research interests include: the greenhouse effect; stratospheric ozone depletion; air pollution; the role of science and technology in national and international policy; and wetlands, forests, and energy policy. Kevin Gallagher is a Research Associate at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. He works on international trade and sustainable development. His recent volumes are: A Survey of Sustainable Development: Social and Economic Dimensions (edited jointly with Jonathan Harris, Tim Wise, and Neva Goodwin), and International Trade and Sustainable Development: An Integrative Approach (edited jointly with Jacob Werksman). He holds a master’s degree in international environmental policy and is currently a doctoral student in international political economy at Tufts. xxii
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The chapters in this volume were originally presented in the series entitled International Environmental Negotiation published annually by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School from 1992 to 2001. They are all based on papers prepared for the graduate seminar on International Environmental Negotiation taught each year by Professors Moomaw and Susskind.
The Authors Fredric A. Beck is Research Manager of the Renewable Energy Policy Project (REPP), a private nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion of renewable energy in the United States through credible research, public education, and outreach to the environmental and legislative communities. Papers soon to be published through REPP include “Powering the South, Biopower in the South,” and “Powering the Digital Economy: Efficient Design of Internet Data Centers.” Mr. Beck holds a joint Masters degree in International Relations and Resource and Environmental Management from Boston University, and a Bachelors degree in Physics, cum laude, from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Michael Bowker lives in Washington, D.C., where he works as an Attorney Advisor in the office of the Legal Advisor, U.S. State Department. Michael Castellano received a B.A. with Honors from Johns Hopkins University in 1994 and graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1998. In 2000, he received a Masters degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University focusing on International Trade and Commercial Policy and International Business and Economic Law. His Masters Thesis, Privatization as Negotiation, applied a negotiations framework to the process of planning and carrying out a privatization program. Mr. Castellano clerked for the Hon. Francis Murnaghan on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1998 to 1999. From 1999 to 2001 he practiced international trade law at the law firm of Dewey Ballantine, LLP. Currently he works in the U.S. House of Representatives for the Democratic staff of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade and as Trade and Tax Counsel to the Hon. Sander M. Levin. Gianfranco Corti lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. He works in the Evaluation and Research Division of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, part of the U.S. Department of Justice. Tobin L. Freid received her Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1993. She recently received a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. At Fletcher, Ms. Freid focused on International Environment and Resource Policy and Negotiations and Conflict Resolution. Ms. Freid has also worked on domestic environmental issues in the White House and the Department of Energy.
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John Harrison is a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales and a partner in the leading public law firm Sharpe Pritchard, where he practices urban planning and environmental law. He was a Harkness Fellow and visiting scholar at the MIT Harvard Public Policy Disputes Program at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School 1995–1996. He is the author of Police Misconduct: Legal Remedies (third edition 1995) and “Environmental Mediation: the Ethical and Constitutional Dimension,” published in the Journal of Environmental Law (U.K.). He published a study of the Aarhus Convention on access to information, public participation, and access to justice in environmental matters as “Legislazione ambientale europea e liberta di informazione: la Convenzione di Aarhus” in the Italian environmental law review Rivista Giuridica Dell’Ambiente. Mark Henderson is completing a doctorate in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley; his research focuses on the geographical patterns of environmental change in China. He previously received a Masters degree in Regional Studies–East Asia from Harvard University and worked for the Massachusetts Office of Environmental Affairs and ManTech Environmental Technology, Inc. His coauthored article “China’s Fertility Transition Through Regional Space” was recently published in Social Science History. Wendy M. Jastremski is currently a Program Analyst in the Presidential Management Internship Program with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She earned two graduate degrees from MIT in 2001: M.S. in Technology Policy and M.S. in Urban Studies and Planning. She received her B.A. in Chemistry from Dartmouth College in 1995. Marcus Dubois King is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he is concentrating on environmental security issues. Mr. King served in staff positions in the Offices of the Secretary of Energy and Defense during the first and second Clinton Administrations. As a consultant, he has written and contributed to several recent reports on both nuclear policy and climate change. Anja Kollmuss holds a graduate degree in Urban and Environmental Policy from Tufts University. Her areas of interest include climate change, consumption, and pro-environmental behavior. She currently works for the Tufts Climate Initiative and is a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Third Assessment Report. Maria Fariello Laux holds a Masters of Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a bachelors of Arts in East Asian Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her professional experience includes having worked with the European Human Rights
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Foundation (U.K.) in Brussels Belgium as project manager for human rights training programs throughout Europe. Heike Mainhardt has worked for more than ten years in both the private and nonprofit sectors of the environmental field on assignments in Indonesia, Peru, Brazil, and Russia. She has been a consultant to a wide range of organizations, including the USEPA, UNEP, World Bank, IFC, IEA, and the Nigerian government. Ms. Mainhardt has an extensive background in the area of climate change and is a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Currently, she is a Senior Program Officer with World Wildlife Fund’s Macroeconomics for Sustainable Development Program Office. Ms. Mainhardt holds a Master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (International Environmental Policy and Development Economics) and a B.S. from the University of Michigan. Adil Najam, originally from Pakistan, is Assistant Professor of International Relations and Environmental Policy at Boston University. His areas of research and writing include international negotiation, international environmental policy, technology policy, international organizations (especially the U.N. system), and the role of non-state actors (especially NGOs) in national and international policy. Prof. Najam serves on several international boards concerned with global environmental matters, and was a chapter lead author for the Third Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He was awarded MIT’s Goodwin Medal for Excellence in Teaching, the Stein Rokan Award of the International Political Science Association (IPSA), and the Emerging Scholar Award of the Association for Research on Nonprofit and Voluntary Association (ARNOVA). Ari Nathan has substantial experience in multilateral environmental agreements and policy issues, including national representation at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. His broad range of legal and diplomatic experience includes overseeing the legal transition of the last U.N. Trust Territory (Palau) to independent status. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. (International Relations) from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University; a J.D. from the Law Center at the University of Southern California; a Certificate in International Law from the Paris Institute of International and Comparative Law; and a B.A. (Anthropology) from the University of California at Berkeley. His recent publications include “Oil Spills in the United States: Response and Liability,” Tropical Coasts, and Best Practices for EPA’s International Capacity-Building Programs (U.S. EPA, 1999). James F. Perkaus is a Fellow in the Climate, Energy, and Pollution Program at the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Washington, D.C. and a Ph.D. candidate in International Relations at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He recently coauthored a WRI Climate Note entitled Risky
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Business: Lessons in Risk Management for an International Greenhouse Gas Emissions Market (available at: www.wri.org/wri/climate). Kristi N. Rea currently serves as the Team Leader, Urban Environmental Initiative (UEI) at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Region 1, New England. The UEI restores the quality of the environment and improves public health in communities throughout New England. In 2000, she was awarded the EPA’s Gold Medal for Superior Government Service for her role in rapidly responding to contamination in the Woonasquatucket River in Rhode Island in a scientifically sound and environmentally just manner. She has extensive experience in the public and private sectors in environmental technology and policy. Ms. Rea earned her Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1994, with special concentrations in International Environmental Law, Environment and Resource Policy, Public International Law, and International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Affairs from Lewis and Clark College in 1992. Laurent Renevier is a Project Manager at Société Générale Investment Banking, a position he has filled at OECD Headquarters in Paris, and at Deutsche Bank Consulting Group in Frankfurt, Germany. He holds a Masters degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and an M.B.A. from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) Paris. Wendy Gay Vanasselt codirects the World Resources Report published by the World Resources Institute (WRI) Washington D.C. Her writing and analysis is currently focused on issues of ecosystem governance. She has also served as associate director of development for the Institute, and, prior to joining WRI, worked to reform the 1872 Mining Law. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Anne M. Weiss is Senior Manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she specializes in the area of corporate disclosure of nonfinancial performance, and assists Fortune 500 companies in developing and managing their corporate social responsibility programs, mitigating reputation risk, and addressing sustainability issues. She leads the development of new services within PwC that aid clients in measuring and reporting these and other intangible assets; she also acts as PwC’s global liaison to the Global Reporting Initiative, an international effort to establish globally applicable guidelines for reporting on the economic, environmental, and social performance of corporations. In February 2000, Ms. Weiss’s commentary “Human Rights and Corporate Governance: Reporting Guidelines for Global Multinationals” was published by the Global Reporting Initiative. She received her Masters in City Planning from MIT, and her B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of California.
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Imke Wesseloh is currently pursuing a Master’s degree at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where she specializes in international commercial and trade policies and international environmental and resource policies. Next year, she will complete an M.B.A. program at the grande ecole “Hautes Etudes Commerciales” in Paris. Ms. Wesseloh is involved with the national organization, Students for Responsible Business (SRB), and she cofounded the first SRB chapter at the Fletcher School. While at Fletcher, she worked part-time for the Center for Applied Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a management consulting firm. Imke earned her undergraduate degree in management and economics at the University of London and worked for Deutsche Bank for two years. Peter Zapfel lives in Brussels.
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Y PART ONE
RESHAPING ATTITUDES The Need to Rethink the Basis for Global Environmental Action
ow we think about international environmental issues and the international political system may be as important as what we think about them. Some of the greatest barriers to achieving international environmental agreements are the mind-sets and cultural divides between nations. It is striking how often negotiators talk past one another because each is arguing from a different set of principles. For example, in the climate negotiations, the United States bases its position on economic efficiency, and the consequences for existing economic interests. Oil exporting countries do not care so much about economic efficiency, but share the American concern of protecting their present industrial base despite its destructive consequences. The U.S. position is not dissimilar to that of many developing countries that argue that protecting the climate must come secondarily to their economic development. Their disagreement is, however, most often cloaked in the banner of equity. The equity principle is often invoked to argue that developing countries deserve to receive special consideration because of their low per capita incomes that can only be bolstered through a process that unfortunately may require further damage to the commons. Some in the South argue further that they deserve reparations from the North for damage already inflicted on the commons. The North in general is unwilling to admit the destructiveness of its pattern of consumption, and still believes that a few technological fixes will suffice to bring the economic and ecological systems into alignment. The third side of the negotiation is informed by the sustainability principle
H
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often advocated by some European nations. As is demonstrated here for climate change, strict adherence to any one of these single principles results in wildly different obligations for each country. The several strategies outlined in this section offer alternatives for reconciling these three different sets of principles. Reconsidering what we mean by the commons and the common heritage of mankind could recast environmental negotiations along a new set of common principles. It may be more effective to give regional groups of nations primary control over specific aspects of the commons, but their efforts must be linked through larger global agreements. Or perhaps in the case of a true global commons such as the climate system, the responsibility might be taken on primarily by those most responsible for threatening it, with other nations playing more of a watchdog role, with a differentiated set of mitigation obligations. It is clear that the benefits derived from protecting the commons are not always seen as sufficient to motivate countries to act, in part because of the high level of distrust that exists among them. History weighs heavily on the present. The accumulated anger of the South towards the North for colonialism spills over like an ideological force of nature. It is argued here that such a reaction is counterproductive to the substantive goals of many developing countries. The same might be said of American insistence that efficient markets be the solution to every problem, even when they are not applicable. The fact is that there is some merit to each of the principles that are implicitly used by differing factions, and elements of each must be incorporated into agreements in order for them to be effective. It is essential that all parties see solutions as fair and equitable, both within the present generation, and for future ones. No political leader can be successful if he or she does not provide for the future of their people. In other words, the sustainability mantra of meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs is not only ethically important, it is politically essential. Finally, since economic resources are limited it is also essential that they be utilized efficiently in restructuring the production system to reduce adverse environmental consequences. To accomplish these transformations of attitudes will require an explicit recognition that differences in values exist, and that a concerted effort must be made to understand differing perspectives and value systems. Implicit assumptions must be illuminated and not hidden under outdated rhetoric. Both the North and the South need to change their attitude from one of blaming each other to utilizing principles of mutual gains to protect their own interests along with the commons and their common heritage. Perhaps, as suggested here, it will be essential to take a head-on approach in which these differences are discussed openly in a forum designed to get attitudes as well as interests onto the negotiating table.
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Y CHAPTER ONE
DEFINING THE “COMMON HERITAGE OF MANKIND” Ari Nathan
n 1967 Arvid Pardo, Malta’s United Nations Ambassador, made his visionary proposal that the seabed and ocean floor be declared a common heritage of mankind. Since that time, the term Common Heritage of Mankind (CHM) has become increasingly popular within the environmental lexicon. It has been described as “the broadest and most sustained attempt ever to reform and codify a set of global environmental norms” (Vogler, 1996, p. 16, referring to UNCLOS III). Another author has suggested that “the common-heritage-of-mankind principle, [is] now widely recognized as an appropriate regulatory mechanism for the protection of global ‘life-support systems’ such as the ozone layer and the climate system” (Imber, 1996, p. 139). Yet despite this there has been a lack of clear agreement about how CHM should be defined.1 Perhaps the broadest way of thinking about CHM is that it is “the natural resources and vital life-support services that belong to all mankind rather than to any one country” (Porter and Brown, 1996, p. 13). That such resources could in some way be considered jointly owned by all humanity is not a brand new idea. The English philosopher John Stuart Mill suggested that “the Earth itself, its forests and water above and below the surface. These are the inheritance of the human race” (quoted in Cairncross, 1992, p. 6). However, although this issue was raised by Mill almost 150 years ago, the specific legal rights associated with this inheritance have not as yet been clearly defined. This definitional lag has been explained by Siebert (1995, p. 103):
I
3
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The definition of property rights has been a historical process. If we look at human development since Adam and Eve left paradise, the increasing scarcity of resources required the definition of property rights. When land was in ample supply, property titles for land were not necessary. When people competed for the scarce good land, property titles became relevant. Similarly, water once was a free good, but today property titles for water are well accepted.
That property rights associated with CHM might evolve was recognized by Mill, who suggested that “air, for example, though the most absolute of necessaries, bears no price in the market because it can be obtained gratuitously . . . It is possible to imagine circumstances in which air would be a part of wealth. If from any revolution in nature the atmosphere became too scanty for the consumption, air might acquire a very high marketable value” (quoted in Hite and others, 1972, p. 15).
Why Is It Necessary to Define CHM? There is growing evidence that CHM is an evolving concept. Concepts which are based on normative principles, or soft laws, are often the foundation for specific multilateral agreements and/or laws because international law is “developed . . . by reference to general principles” (Birnie quoted in Susskind, 1994, p. 30). They can also “be hardened by later international practice. [And]soft-law instruments have also served as forerunners of subsequent treaty law . . . or as a mandate for new mechanisms of intergovernmental cooperation” (Sand, 1991, p. 253). Even more specifically, “Soft law may be turned into binding international law in two ways: Principles included in soft-law agreement may become so widely regarded as the appropriate norms for a problem that they are ultimately absorbed into treaty law; or political pressures may arise from those dissatisfied with spotty adherence to soft-law norms to turn a nonbinding agreement into a binding one” (Porter and Brown, 1996, p. 45). Normative principles provide an underlying foundation that can be agreed to and to which the parties can refer to resolve (otherwise) contentious issues. They are particularly helpful in the development of environmental agreements because environmental treaties often involve disagreeable sacrifices that no party wishes to make, and simply compromising on the degree of the sacrifice each party makes is often not an effective protective mechanism for the environment. But, with a normative principle to serve as the basis to resolve disagreements in the formation of the agreement, compromises are likely to be more compatible with the general environmental goals of the agreement. For CHM to effectively move from a concept based on soft law to actual hard law requires that it be clearly defined. Hard laws need to be enforceable, which
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means they must be specific enough to be understood. It has, for example, been pointed out by Susskind (1992) that the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Shipment of Hazardous Waste avoids the politically difficult task of defining key terms. While this lack of specificity made it possible for reluctant countries to sign, it also undermines the chances of successful implementation. For instance, the agreement calls for the disposal of hazardous waste in an “environmentally sound manner.” It does not, however, say what this means (Susskind, 1992a, p. 67). Additionally, before a concept such as CHM could explicitly become the basis for multilateral agreements, those states potentially adversely impacted by the agreement may require that it be clearly defined. Multilateral agreements to protect the environment (and hence normative principles on which such agreements can be based) are needed because “global environmental systems cannot either be annexed by states or be left res nullis (without the protection of the law), for they would then be liable to destruction by unregulated exploitation—Hardin’s ‘tragedy of the commons’ ” (Imber, 1996, p. 139). The globalization of the tragedy of the commons is a function of “national efforts to maintain not only control over all decisions within their geopolitical borders but autonomy over actions that affect common areas and resources as well” (Susskind, 1994, p. 21). Without clear and objective international standards, the environment will continue to be abused because individuals and nations are also less likely to acknowledge the harm of their own actions. This means that the need for “locating those political values that can ascribe meaning to global political life, and can provide grounds for selecting practical solutions to insoluble philosophical problems” (Dryer, 1996, p. 36) is particularly acute.2
Different Definitions of CHM A review of the relevant literature reveals three distinct definitions of CHM, each based on a different normative principle. Which principle one uses to define CHM may be a function of the perception one has of the overriding need(s) which could be met if CHM becomes an accepted concept in global environmental regimes. But how one defines CHM will create quite different results when trying to quantitatively outline relative obligations under a potential agreement. The first normative principle used to define CHM builds on the notion that there should be a fair and egalitarian distribution of common resources (FAIR). In other words, all people should benefit from resources that are not exclusively owned by any single nation. In accordance with FAIR, “developing-country officials as well as NGOs began to demand in the early 1990s that industrialized countries reduce their share of what they call ‘environmental space’—the use of the
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earth’s limited natural resources and environmental services—and permit developing countries to use more of that environmental space in order to raise their living standards” (Porter and Brown, 1991, p. 112). However, developing countries are not necessarily proponents of FAIR. It was fear of FAIR that led Malaysia and India to object to the application of principles of global responsibility for forest management because they saw this as an attempt “to establish the legal principle that forests are ‘global commons’ or part of the ‘common heritage of mankind,’ thus giving industrialized countries some right to interfere in the management of the tropical forest countries’ resources” (Porter and Brown, 1991, p. 126). FAIR may also be seen as a primary motivating factor in the Second World Climate Conference’s declaration that “in order to stabilize atmospheric conditions of greenhouse gases while allowing for growth in emissions from developing countries, industrialized countries must implement reductions even greater than those required, on average, for the globe as a whole” (Paterson, 1991, p. 66).3 The second normative principle on which the definition of CHM could be based is the idea of stewardship or intergenerational sustainability (SUSTAIN). SUSTAIN is an explicit component of Edith Brown Weiss’s “Declaration of Planetary Rights and Obligations to Future Generations” which lays out principles of intergenerational equity. SUSTAIN also underlies the “Bill of Rights for Future Generations” which Jacques Cousteau proposed and which has been signed by millions of people. It stands for the idea that future generations have a right to an uncontaminated and undamaged Earth and that present generations are responsible for protecting that right. The proposed “Declaration of the Right to Nature Conservation, Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development,” which was produced by the Bruntland Commission, relies on SUSTAIN in its call for nations to “conserve and use the environment and natural resources for the benefit of present and future generations . . . prevent or abate any transboundary environmental interference which could cause or causes significant harm . . . provide compensation for the harm caused” (Susskind, 1994, pp. 176–179). Together these documents lay out “principles of intergenerational equity” (Susskind, 1994, p. 108) with the underlying view being that each future generation is entitled to receive an undamaged earth and that therefore each present generation has an obligation to prevent harm to it. The third normative principle that can define CHM hinges on the idea that harm to the planet should be avoided or reduced by the most economical, efficient, and functional (ECON) means possible.4 This is the view that locates the problem of sustainability within the context of a global economy of mutually interdependent actors. They regard nature as a commodity that can be subject to property rights, and believe that market mechanisms create the most efficient use of
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resources. Sustainable development policies can be pursued through the creation of economic incentives to retard, stop, or reverse the process of environmental degradation (Williams, 1996, p. 53). A rationale behind ECON is that “clear rights of ownership for natural resources may sometimes improve the way they are managed. If ownership of environmental assets is clearly established, then polluters and the polluted will be able to bargain over a reasonable price for allowing pollution to take place” (Cairncross, 1992, p. 10).5 The application of economics to environmentalism “seems odd to many environmentalists. The very idea that values can be attached to natural beauty is an affront to those who think that it is beyond price” (Cairncross, 1992, p. 7). How much odder then to go a step further and consider economic analysis as an actual normative principle. However, one of the fundamental principles underlying neoclassical economics6 is that it provides the mechanism for the maximization of happiness (for contemporary humans at least). While one may not feel that the maximization of happiness (or utility) is the best of all normative principles, it is hard to deny7 that it is reasonable to consider it as a potential normative principle. A cost-benefit analysis is the primary method used to determine how ECON best maximizes utility. To summarize, FAIR, SUSTAIN, and ECON appear to represent three possible, and very different, ways in which CHM can be defined. While one might argue that CHM should encompass all three definitions, analyzing each separately produces very different results, which suggests the difficulty in amalgamating them. To illustrate how this is so it is useful to examine the application of each definition to a specific environmental issue; in this chapter, the introduction of greenhouse gases (GHG)8 into the atmosphere.
A Bunch of Hot (and Dirty) Air The fact that there is some relationship between GHG and climate change is relatively straightforward and agreed upon. During the day the sun transfers to the earth heat energy that is radiated back into space as infrared energy. Some of this infrared energy radiation is absorbed by GHG in the atmosphere. Naturally (that is, non-technologically) produced CO2 and water vapor were the two primary GHG prior to the beginning of the industrial revolution. Since 1800 the increases in GHG have included the doubling of methane, the introduction of synthetic CFCs (which are also infamous as ozone depletors), and an increase in atmospheric CO2 of over 25 percent (Baarschers, 1996, p. 127). Although much of this discussion focuses on emissions, it is the total quantity of GHG in the atmosphere that creates the greenhouse effect. Of the
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different GHG, CO2 is the most important one because it has by far the largest effect on climate change given its quantity, infrared absorption capacity, and life span. Since 1960 alone global concentration of CO2 has increased from 316 parts per million (ppm) to 350 ppm.9 Approximately 80 percent of the CO2 increase is from the use of fossil fuels (particularly car exhaust and electric power production) with the remaining increase coming primarily from the burning of tropical rain forests and the production of cement (Rathjens, 1991, p. 157). Although there is consensus within the scientific community that global warming is occurring and that it is linked to increased atmospheric concentrations of GHG, “it is very difficult to calculate the potential enhancement of the greenhouse effect by atmospheric pollution . . . the magnitude of the effect is still unknown” (Baarschars, 1996, p. 127). However, it is speculated that “this warming could shift storm track patterns and significantly diminish soil moisture levels in major grain-producing areas, such as China, the United States, and the (former) Soviet Union. Thermal expansion of the oceans and some melting of sea ice could raise the average sea level, flooding most of low-lying Bangladesh. Worse, nonlinear or unexpected changes in the climate system might occur” (Chandler, 1990, p. 1). Moreover, “whole ecological systems could be destroyed or transformed, especially with the destruction of wetlands, estuaries, and barrier islands. The possibility of dramatic changes in ocean currents . . . could have catastrophic effects on fisheries and local climates” (Rathjens, 1991, p. 167). It is helpful to think of air pollution as a resource use, since air is a resource which pollution adversely affects. Such a perspective “interprets nature and the environment as a scarce resource . . . Consequently, environmental disruption and environmental use are by nature allocation problems” (Siebert, 1995, p. xiii). In this view, consideration of air pollution becomes an issue “of competing uses and is, therefore, a question of scarcity. Thus using the environment presents itself as an allocation problem” (Siebert, 1995, p. 18). This problem is assisted by the use of cost/benefit analysis, but such analysis is not easy,10 as “the problem of measuring the demand for nonmarket goods, such as environmental amenities, is doubly difficult. In the case of marketable goods the economists can observe the quantities purchased at given prices and apply statistical techniques to get some estimate of demand. But since there are no explicit markets for clean air, clean water and many other types of environmental amenities, there are no prices of quantities to observe” (Hite, 1972, p. 40). In addition to the problems associated with costing global warming, there are two “major and fundamental problems in trying to ‘do something’ about the GHG problem . . . the uncertainty as to the magnitude and seriousness of climate change . . . and the time scales of concern” (Rathjens, 1991, p. 171). The time problem associated with analyzing the impact of GHG has two components.
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First, the time scale for effects of GHG is large (relative to the type of cause-effect relationships which usually result in policy decisions in human affairs). The global system of oceans acts as a heat sink that by itself can delay climate response by “a decade or two. More important is the fact that the effects of GHG buildup will be cumulative over a time scale measured in centuries. This follows because . . . with the exception of methane and ozone, the other important greenhouse gases have lives in the range of 50–175 years” (Rathjens, 1991, pp. 177–178). The second time-scale problem is the moral and economic issue of how to properly discount. Essentially time discounting is the application of a number per time-unit through which the value of money in the future is converted to the value of money in the present. When one is dealing in the scale of centuries (as one is forced to do when analyzing the impact of global warming) the discount rate used can lead to vast differences in the value assigned to harms and benefits. In fact, a primary difference in the analysis of two of the leading scholars on the issue of the harms and benefits associated with GHG (Nordhaus and Cline) is a function of the different discount rates they use.11
Different Definitions, Different Results If one construes CHM to refer literally to an inheritance, three primary variable factors can be applied to each definition. To put it in other words, there are three questions which one would ask about any inheritance. First is the question of entitlement: Who, or what, is the entity that is the beneficiary of the inheritance? The second question is the nature of the inheritance: What is being inherited? In reference to air pollution emission controls this would be translated into the amounts of emissions one considers as being the inheritance. Finally, there is the question of the value of the inheritance—what is the inheritance worth?12 Each of the three different definitions of CHM will lead to different answers to these questions.13 Although this chapter addresses all of these questions for each of the definitions it needs to be clear that the actual numbers used are estimates. However, the point is not the specific numbers generated but the general relationship between the different results. Almost all of the data considered here is for 1992 with the exceptions of the population rankings and the data used in the generation of the Nordhaus Optimum percentage reduction. Who Inherits? With regard to the issue of entitlement there are three reasonable possibilities. Perhaps the most obvious “possible basis for allocating quotas is simply population.
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Here, the notion is the ultimate equality-oriented rule: one person, one emissions vote. This basis has the merit of equity” (Cline, 1992, p. 353). From this perspective, all mankind would be treated equally with regard to entitlement to the CHM. This perspective would be consistent with FAIR. One could also assume that each nation receives one equal share. This position is based on the neo-realist analysis that “the world is composed primarily of sovereign states, which can be treated as unitary actors” (Paterson, 1996, p. 62). In fact, it is nations, not individuals, NGOs, or other actors, who enter into treaties. Such a perspective would be compatible with the SUSTAIN definition of CHM because nations are the organizations with the best capacity for representing their future citizensl4 and it is nations which make treaties and vote in the United Nations General Assembly (on the basis of one nation, one vote). Next, one could blend population and nationhood.15 For example, if each nation was ranked according to its population then China (with 1,165,800,000 people in 1992) would receive 167 shares (the approximate number of nations in 1992) and Iceland (with 300,000 people in 1992) would receive ten shares. Note that if only population were used then China’s share would be approximately 3,900 times greater than Iceland’s share and if only nationhood were used then they would have the same share. Taking into consideration both population and statehood might be an appropriate and acceptable compromise. This would be consistent with the ECON definition of CHM because its potential acceptability makes it more functional by recognizing the mutual interdependence of states. What Is Inherited? The second question to answer is what specifically is the inheritance. To rephrase it, which range of emissions do we consider to be subject to the inheritance? This is vitally important as “different schemes for defining the trading baseline have different consequences” (Tietenberg, 1991, p. 212). One might consider three levels— each of which relates most directly to one of the three possible definitions of CHM. If CHM is based on the FAIR perspective then all emissions over zero should be considered to be subject to the inheritance because it should be equitably and fully distributed regardless of the amount of GHG emitted. However, if one is defining CHM in accordance with the SUSTAIN view then one is only concerned with emissions above the level that the ecosystem can naturally process. All emissions up to this level (that is, all emissions of CO2 that trees and plants convert through photosynthesis) would not be considered as a part of the CHM because under SUSTAIN it is acceptable for any party to emit up to such a level. It is estimated that 1.67 billion tons (bt) of carbon are
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annually processed by terrestrial ecosystems (although there is some partitioning of such processing and the figure will change as emissions levels change). Therefore, any emission above 1.67 bt per year would become part of the CHM inheritance to be shared if SUSTAIN is used. If one ascribes to an ECON definition of CHM then the level of emissions subject to the inheritance can be determined by what one could refer to as the “Nordhaus Optimum” (Nordhaus, 1994). This is essentially the amount of carbon emissions that is economically efficient to produce because it is the point where the social marginal benefit of reducing pollution equals the social marginal cost of reducing it. This Optimum is an attempt to balance the costs of emissions controls against the benefits of emissions controls (discounted over time of course). The general idea is that it would not make economic sense to spend one trillion dollars on carbon emission reductions if the total discounted benefit16 (which in this case would be the savings which would result from not having the costs associated with the climate change created by GHG) of doing so would only be one billion dollars. The United States is following this general reasoning in its current push for an international joint implementation technology transfer program whereby nations such as the United States in which it would cost (for example) $100 to reduce carbon output by one ton will offer assistance to nations such as China where it would (for example) cost only $10 to reduce carbon output by one ton.17 The Nordhaus Optimum includes CO2 and CFCs for 1995 but one can still compare its projected value for 1995 and the projected uncontrolled emission for 1995 to generate a Nordhaus Optimum of 8.8 percent lower than uncontrolled discharge (Nordhaus, 1994, p. 88). Applying this to the global carbon figures for 1992 (6,098.7 million tons) produces a rough figure of 5,562 million tons. The difference between the global carbon discharge and the Nordhaus Optimum is 536.7 million tons, the amount of carbon to which an ECON perspective will apply free market principles in order to ensure that this excess carbon is paid for. The Nordhaus Optimum is consistent with the ECON perspective of the CHM for a variety of reasons. It is based on an economic model and in fact the economic logic behind it seems consistent with the paradigm of economic efficiency currently dominant in much of the world. It generates a higher number than either FAIR (zero) or SUSTAIN (1.67 billion tons) which means that a smaller amount of pollution must be paid for. While this may seem like a cynically appeasement-oriented reason it is unlikely that nations using more than their share (however that is defined) of the CHM are going to accept financial responsibility for the large monetary obligations to which either the FAIR or SUSTAIN perspective would lead. Finally, with improvements in emissions reductions technology (to which the tradable discharge system discussed infra would contribute) the Nordhaus Optimum could also drop over time.
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What Is It Worth? The third question one would ask regarding any inheritance is value. In the case of atmospheric emissions this translates into the issue of what method is used to determine how much the “polluter should pay.” In keeping with the analytic framework established here, there are three possible ways of determining the value of the right to pollute, each of which is consistent with one of the different definitions of CHM. If one believes that the purpose of CHM is to help ensure that there is a fair and egalitarian distribution of common benefits (that is, FAIR) then the focus would be on the benefits of polluting. In other words, one would look only to the economic advantage that polluters receive by virtue of their polluting (ignoring the potential damage atmospheric pollution could create) and seek to distribute that advantage in accordance with FAIR distribution principles. In determining what the benefits of being able to pollute are, one can look to projected estimates of the costs to the economy if carbon emissions were reduced.18 Such “estimates vary a lot . . . this is because of different research approaches, different assumptions, data, and the like. But it also reflects the inherent difficulty and uncertainty of doing studies that try to extrapolate well into the future” (Field, 1994, p. 437). In reviewing a number of studies in this area one author estimated that “at the most summary level, then, a carbon reduction of x percent will require a reduction of GNP by 0.04x percent, caused by an energy reduction of 0.5x percent in combination with an output elasticity of energy of 0.08x” (Cline, 1992, p. 191). Since the FAIR perspective considers all emissions as part of the inheritance this would mean that x in the equation would be 100 and therefore the value of being able to emit carbon domestically is 4 percent of GNP. Making a leap from gross domestic product to gross world product (GWP) one reaches a figure of $21,850,000,000,000 for 1992 and the value of being able to emit carbon could therefore be estimated at $1,024,000,000,000. The next perspective from which to define CHM is SUSTAIN. In determining the value of the inheritance, SUSTAIN suggests that one look to the harm caused19 and apply what is known as the polluter-pays or full-cost rule. The polluterpays rule is based on the idea that a party has a “property rights claim . . . equal to the damage caused” (Susskind, 1994, p. 89). The full-cost rule is a variation that states, “all users of environmental resources should pay their full cost. Those using the environment as a waste repository, for example, would be presumed responsible . . . for restoring environmental resources damaged beyond some de minimus amount and for compensating for damage caused . . . This principle is based on the presumption that humanity has a right to a reasonably safe and healthy environment. Since this right has been held in common for the stratosphere . . . it
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has been involuntarily surrendered on a first come, first served basis without compensation” (Tietenberg, 1991, p. 213). There are two ways of applying the damage component of SUSTAIN to CHM—either pay for the damage caused or for the restoration of the environment. The difference between these two types of costs is illustrated by the example of strip mining on a piece of land originally worth, for instance, $10,000 which is now only worth $2,500 and which could be restored to its original condition for $20,000. In this case the compensation could be construed as payment of $7,500 to the owner of the land or as paying $20,000 to restore the land to its original condition.20 It would be compatible with SUSTAIN for the value of the inheritance to be the cost of processing GHG such that they have no greenhouse effect. Alternatively, the SUSTAIN analysis of CHM could focus on compensation for the damage created by GHG provided such damage is considered to include harm to the future in addition to that of the present.21 In discussions of the damage which a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will produce Nordhaus suggests that it would be 1.33 percent of GWP per year (Nordhaus, 1994, p. 55) with Cline agreeing that it would be between 1 and 2 percent of GWP per year22 (Cline, 1992, p. 132). It is also estimated that “even if all man-made emissions were to stop virtually immediately . . . the equilibrium amount of warming already committed amounts to about 1.7°C. Moreover, the IPCC estimates that even if an aggressive program of ‘accelerated policies’ were adopted by the year 2100 ultimate warming of a central value of 2.4°C seems almost inevitable” (Cline, 1992, p. 35). Making the, perhaps overly optimistic,23 assumption that total atmospheric CO2 will be held at double the current levels, we may, not unreasonably, assign a damage24 inheritance factor valued under a SUSTAIN perspective (based on the amount of CO2 each nation emits) at 1.33 percent of GWP. Cline has also analyzed CO2 emission abatement costs (Cline, 1992, p. 229). He concludes that reductions in CO2 emissions of between 20 percent and 90 percent from the 1990 level would, by the year 2025, range from zero cost (because a 20 percent abatement could be achieved by increasing energy efficiency with current technologies which would create savings in costs of energy use) to 3.2 percent of GWP (Cline, 1992, p. 229). The reduction from the 1991 level of emissions of 6.19 bt to the 1.67 bt which can be naturally processed would be a reduction of over 100 percent from the current baseline of emissions. This reduction would require a consistent annual commitment of over 3 percent of GWP. Combining the damage factor and the abatement factor, one can produce a (very) rough damage/abatement factor of 2.2 percent of GWP. Next, we can ask what is the economic, efficient, and functional method of determining the value of the inheritance. The ECON approach is to let the market
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make the determination through a transferable discharge permit system. Such a system creates a new type of property right which consists of a “permit to emit pollutants. Each permit entitles its holder to emit one unit (pound, ton, however the permit is calibrated) of the waste material specified in the right . . . These discharge permits are transferable; they can be bought and sold among anybody allowed to participate in the permit market, at whatever price is agreed upon by the participants themselves” (Field, 1994, p. 248).25 The United States has been using the transferable discharge permit system for a number of years. It was particularly successful “in 1985 when it gave oil refineries two years in which to cut the allowable lead content of gas. Refineries received quotas of lead, which they could trade with each other. The effect was to let them phase in the cut in lead at their own pace. Half of all the refineries took part in trading . . . The EPA’s attempts since 1974 to allow companies to trade airpollution permits have been less successful” (Cairncross, 1992, p. 102). An international transferable discharge permit system is especially attractive. Such a system “[would promote] cost effectiveness . . . because those sources that can reduce their emissions most cheaply choose to do so, selling the resulting emission reduction credits to others . . . the mandated improvements are achieved more quickly with trading and with less litigation . . . [such a system would] facilitate a more cost effective allocation among nations, but it would leave the valuation of these transfers to what is now a global market place . . . [and] would facilitate the movement of credits from those countries with the capacity to create them most cheaply to those countries faced by very high costs of additional control” (Tietenberg, 1991, pp. 210–220). As Cline (1992, p. 351) has described it, “if a country has a quota allocation that is small relative to its demand, its firms will bid to purchase quotas from other countries. Other countries will sell a portion of their quotas to the point where the marginal cost of cutting back a ton of carbon emissions at home equals the price of a ton ‘exported’ through the sale of an emissions permit. International abatement will thus be pursued at minimum cost, in a manner similar to the outcome under taxation and in contrast to the result with a rigid, non-tradable quota system . . . tradable permits minimize overall abatement cost by allocating the cutbacks to the countries where marginal costs of emissions reductions are the lowest.” This is why Cairncross (1992, p. 105) has noted that “America is eager to extend the idea of tradable permits into a completely new field: that of international environmental agreements. In particular, it wants an international trading system for greenhouse gases as part of a deal to tackle global warming.”26 As discussed above, the United States is advocating a joint implementation technology transfer program which would be based on similar goals but would not require as
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extensive a multilateral agreement as an international trading permits regime would. Any transferable discharge permit system must have an upper allowable limit of emissions. Although one could simply set the limit at the Nordhaus Optimum and prohibit any emissions above this limit, this is unlikely to be agreed upon since it would require large reductions in emissions. However, whatever number is internationally agreed upon, perhaps in accordance with the Convention on Climate Change (and there is a possibility that this could be a “return to ‘earlier’ emission levels by 2000” (Susskind, 1994, p. 174)), it could serve as the upper limit for determining the acceptable levels of emissions. It would therefore be possible to have discharge permits distributed to nations in proportion to their actual carbon emissions27 (their projected emissions multiplied by the percent ratio of the Nordhaus Optimum to total carbon discharges) up to the Optimum, and then have an additional set of discharge permits distributed in accordance with the “blend” system proposed above. For the purpose of this analysis we can look to an Optimum of 91.2 percent of Nordhaus’s projection of 1995 uncontrolled levels (Nordhaus, 1994, p. 88) and consider the 536.7 million tons (6,098.7 mt .088) as being subject to the transferable discharge permit system. Because the value of discharge permits would be unknown until one actually instituted the system, one is forced to use the next best thing, the estimated amount of a carbon tax which would reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent; $40 per ton, for this analysis (Cline, 1992, p. 369). We can now calculate the actual numbers to quantitatively compare the differences among using a FAIR, SUSTAIN, or ECON perspective to define CHM (see Table 1.1). Perhaps not surprisingly, quite different results are obtained with the different perspectives. For example, FAIR leads to China being owed over $135 billion; SUSTAIN results in China owing close to $91 billion; and ECON indicates that China would have to purchase over $2 billion worth of discharge permits to be able to continue to emit carbon at the same rate (although if it could make a 20 percent reduction in emissions it would have over $3 billion worth of discharge permits to sell). Under FAIR Indonesia receives $32 billion and under ECON it should earn over $70 billion but under SUSTAIN it is liable for only $5 billion. Under FAIR Mexico receives over $4 billion; under SUSTAIN it owes over $10 billion; and under ECON it owes $81 billion. Somalia, however, receives money under all three perspectives—almost $2 billion with FAIR, over $1 billion with SUSTAIN, and close to $125 million with ECON.28 What these extreme differences suggest is that if CHM is to continue to evolve from a soft law into a hard law, making the leap from a general normative principle vaguely referred to in the preambles of environmental treaties to a methodology used to determine specific commitments, then we need to know what CHM means.
728.4/11.94 1332.6/21.85 50.4/0.83 59.3/0.97 90.9/1.5 239.8/3.93 79.2/1.3 60.2/0.99 0.004/0.00007 0.036/0.0006 0.044/0.0007 0.49/0.008
C emil/% total
3
1533.8 336 243.9 198.2 115.9 106.1 54.9 21.3 11 0.91 0.52 0.4
Ent-FAIR
4
6
805.4/$135,226.70 996.6/$167,329.10 193.5/$32,488.70 138.9/$23,321.30 25.0/$4,197.50 133.7/$22,448.20 24.3/$4,078.00 38.9/$6,561.30 11.0/$1,846.20 0.8/$146.70 0.48/$79.90 0.09/$15.10
10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
(ent-act)/ FAIR val(mil) Ent-SUS
5
$91,236.80 $167,970.20 $5,130.80 $6,261.10 $10,274.30 $29,184.60 $8,788.40 $6,375.40 $1,270.00 $1,265.40 $1,264.40 $1,198.30
SUS val (mil)
7
664.3 6.23 1215.3 6.23 46.0 6.17 54.1 6.17 82.9 5.96 218.7 5.90 72.2 5.36 54.9 4.06 0.00365 1.34 0.0328 1.34 0.04 0.421 0.0447 0.383
Ent-ECON
8
$2308.40 $4442.80 $70.80 $38.80 $81.60 $608.00 $65.60 $49.60 $118.00 $53.50 $16.70 $0.06
ECON val(mil)
9
2Populations
chosen to give a wide range in terms of population, geographic location, state of development and Carbon emissions. are for 1992 from “Information Please AImanac/1993” (Houghton-Mifflin: 128–9). Numbers are in millions. 3Carbon output is for 1992 from “World Resources/ 1996–1997” (World Resources Institute: 326–7). Carbon Dioxide emission figures (in millions of metric tons) are derived by multiplying CO2 emissions by the weight of CO2/weight of C or 44 / 12 0.273. Total worldwide Carbon Dioxide emissions of 22,339.408 mt are therefore multiplied by 0.273 to give a worldwide Carbon emission figure of 6098.7 mt. 4Percentage of world population the total Carbon emitted worldwide (for FAIR). 5Gross World Product (“GWP”) $25,600,000,000,000 for 1992 (from “Information Please AImanac/1993,” Houghton-Mifflin: 128). A Carbon reduction of y% requires GWP reduction of 0.04y%; $25,600,000,000,000 0.04 $1,024,000,000,000. $1,024,000,000,000/6,098.7 mt C $167.9 ton (for FAIR). 6Amount of Carbon that the environment can annually process 1670 mt (“Climate Change of 1995, Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”: 457). Entitlement I670mt/167 states I0mt/nation (for SUSTAIN). 7GWP $25,600,000,000,000. Damage/abatement (D/A) factor 2.2% of GWP to reduce Carbon emissions from 6098.7 mt to 1670 mt; $563,200,000,000 for reduction of emissions of 4428.7 mt $127/ton for D/A. (Entitlement-Actual emissions) $127/ton (for SUSTAIN). 8Entitlement (91.2% of Actual emissions: the NO) (State Share based on relative population [1 167/based on 1982 ranking]) (536.7 mt the difference between Actual emissions and the NO)/(14,028: the total of all State shares) (for ECON). 9Value Entitlement Actual emissions $40/ton (for ECON).
1States
1165.8/25.15 225.6/5.51 184.5/4.0 150.8/3.25 87.7/1.9 80.6/1.74 41.7/0.9 16.1/0.35 8.3/0.18 0.7/0.015 0.4/0.0086 0.3/0.0065
Pop (mil)/% total
Country
China United States Indonesia Brazil Mexico Gemlany S. Africa Saudi Arabia Somalia Bhutan Solomon Islands Iceland
2
1
TABLE 1.1
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Meanwhile, Back in the Real World . . . The natural question at this point would be whether multilateral environmental agreements are actually based on definitions of CHM and, if so, on which definitions. Two environmental agreements of the last two decades particularly well known for the strength of their respective normative foundations are the Law of the Sea Convention which was reached at the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) and the Montreal Protocol (to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer) on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (Montreal Protocol). At UNCLOS III, agreement was reached “that the minerals of the international area of the sea bed belonged to ‘mankind’ as a whole; they were not just free for anyone to take without payment in any manner they chose” (Ogley, 1996, p. 160). Discussions were initiated for “the creation of a regime to govern sea-bed mining in the interests of mankind” (Ogley, 1996, p. 158). UNCLOS III was to guarantee that “all rights in resources [outside national EEZs] are vested in mankind as a whole . . . ” (Part XI, Section 2, Article 137.2). It looks like FAIR is the normative principle at work here with a goal of making an equitable distribution of resource benefits. The SUSTAIN definition of CHM seems to be the basis for the Montreal Protocol which is to “protect the ozone layer by taking precautionary measures to control equitably total global emissions of substances which deplete it” (Preamble to Protocol). The protection of the ozone layer is, of course, necessary in order to reduce the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the earth’s surface and damaging life. The Montreal Protocol seems to be based firmly on the SUSTAIN value of protecting the planet for present and future generations. It has been cited as a regime which could “actually reverse in future decades the damage to the ozone layer which has occurred since the 1960s” (Porter and Brown, 1991, p. 77). A closer look at the formation of UNCLOS III and the Montreal Protocol suggests that the enunciated normative principles may not tell the whole story. It has been argued that at UNCLOS III the ultimate outcome was dictated “by the rich, potential sea-bed-mining states” (Ogley, 1996, p. 168) leading to an agreement in which the attempt to create a regime “in the interests of mankind was futile” (Ogley, 1996, p. 168). Below the surface of UNCLOS III the economics of ocean resources utilization were at least as influential as the FAIR normative value. Furthermore, the momentum for the Montreal Protocol did not develop until the chemical industry had announced cost-effective alternatives to CFCs and thus “the imposition of severe economic constraints on use by any of the largest countries could well have made sense, even aside from the question of ozone damage and actions by other nations” (Rathjens, 1991, p. 186). In other words, CFC
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reduction was not agreed on until there were economic incentives to do so. While SUSTAIN values may have been important, underlying economic factors also played a major role in the development of the Montreal Protocol. This suggests that even those environmental agreements that at first appear to be based on discrete definitions of CHM are often the product of a blend of definitions. However, this is generally unacknowledged and not explicitly considered in the formation of agreements. There are a number of reasons why this nonrecognition could have a negative effect on environmental regimes and why having clear definition(s) would be appropriate. Lack of a clear definition means that in the formation of the agreement there are no agreed-upon general normative principles to which the parties can turn for guidance in developing specific language. Parties may also be less likely to enter into an agreement if they are uncertain as to what exactly they are getting into. Explicit recognition of the different definitions of CHM force different analyses to be undertaken and considered. More than one analysis can lead to a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of the issue. Multiple analyses can also create additional potentials for tradeoffs between the parties involved (linkage) that facilitate creative win-win situations. Once an environmental regime has been developed, clear underlying normative principles can make enforcement easier by clarifying otherwise ambiguous language. Having explicit principles underlying an environmental regime may also make it easier to extend and expand the regime since the parties know and agree on what the regime is really about and, perhaps even more importantly, because such an expansion would have moral strength. It might be valuable to have an international agreement to determine exactly what the definition of CHM is. However, the result of such an agreement would probably not be that CHM means FAIR (or SUSTAIN or ECON). Rather, one might expect a definition that combined and blended all three values and would sound something like, “the Common Heritage of Mankind means that the costs and benefits of resource use should be equitably distributed taking into consideration the needs of future generations, factors unique to each nation involved (including but not limited to population), and the economic impact of any agreement on the resource use.” Such a definition may not be overly helpful but, given the vast differences implied by the different definitions, it would be a surprise if a more narrow one could be agreed upon. However, it would be both possible and useful to 1. Have a clear understanding that there are different reasonable definitions of CHM, 2. Explicitly and transparently consider how each definition could lead to a different agreement, and
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3. Openly and quantitatively agree on the blend of definitions—recognizing that different definitions should have different relative weights in the development of regimes targeted for different types of environmental harms. This would require an interdisciplinary approach to the formation of environmental agreements. An institutional mechanism would have to be developed which could efficiently, effectively, and credibly make all of the different analyses while respecting the fact that any numbers generated are not necessarily what will be required in the final agreement but are only a component to be used in making the agreement. Numbers under all three definitions of CHM (if CHM is considered an appropriate concept to be used in the environmental regime) could be generated in a manner similar to that attempted in this paper. Then the parties to the agreement would have to agree on the relative contribution that each definition of CHM should have for that particular regime. The type of harm targeted by a specific environmental agreement is relevant to the weighting of the contributions of the different definitions of CHM. Where the targeted harm is the potential for irreversible loss of critical natural capital (such as the extinction of a species) then the SUSTAIN definition should be considered the most important. However, if the resource being protected is regenerative (such as commercial fisheries) then ECON should be given the most relative weight. Finally, when the resource is neither regenerative nor critical (such as manganese nodules—there are alternative ways to get the same minerals) then FAIR is most appropriate. Having the numbers (and their monetary implications) associated with each definition will undoubtedly affect how the parties wish to have the different definitions weighted. However, with an accepted metaprinciple on how to relatively compare the normative principles if the parties agree on the purpose of the agreement then they should be able to agree on the weighting of the definitions. Having all of the normative principles involved in an environmental regime openly and transparently on the table means that any agreement reached will be an accurate and true reflection of the interests and intentions of the parties involved.
Notes 1. A similar definitional need has arisen with regard to what is rigor (Lele, 1991, p. 607). 2. The need for specific solutions grounded on agreed-upon normative values is especially relevant in the case of an issue such as global warming because “some of the largest contributors to the problem would likely judge the direct benefits, if any, not commensurate with the costs to them, and most of those likely to reach the opposite conclusion on the
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7. 8.
9.
10.
cost-benefit issue would have little leverage to induce accession by the major actors” (Rathjens, 1991, p. 177). The ability to effectuate agreement on this issue could also be hampered by the fact that there is differential harm from global warming postulated for different regions. However, for the purpose of developing normative principles this is irrelevant as we are essentially assuming that a Rawlsian veil of ignorance exists regarding each nation’s emissions and susceptibility to harm from global warming (Rawls, 1971). It is worth noting that this is unlikely to stabilize the global climate given the “unpleasant fact of inertia in climate change. Scientific estimates suggest that the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will lead to significant climate change even if we take stringent steps to reduce emissions” (Nordhaus, 1994, p. 189) and even “to stabilize the global concentrations of carbon dioxide . . . would not reduce the warming to which earlier emissions have already committed the earth” (Porter and Brown, 1991, p. 93). It might be noted that these three definitional approaches to CHM closely parallel attempts to define sustainable development. For example, the World Resources Institute points out that “in an attempt to make the concept of sustainable development more specific, some authors . . . stress using renewable natural resources in a manner that does not eliminate or degrade them or otherwise diminish their ‘renewable’ usefulness for future generations. Some economic definitions of sustainable development have also focused on optimal resource management by concentrating on maximizing the net benefits of economic development, subject to maintaining the services and quality of natural resources.” But many authors argue that the issue is the quality of growth and how its benefits are distributed. However, this author then goes on to suggest that establishing ownership principles over some resources, including the atmosphere, “is too difficult; the number of polluters and of those affected by pollution is too great for bargaining to be practical” (World Resources Institute, 1993, p. 2). However, neoclassical economics, sometimes disparagingly referred to as frontier economics, is criticized for suggesting a sense of unlimited resources and an infinite supply of sinks for waste disposal (Porter and Brown, 1996, p. 23). Although a very strong and engaging argument has been made by Sagoff that “efficiency has no normative claim or moral worth” (Sagoff, 1988, p. 107). I will focus specifically on CO2 because “Carbon Dioxide . . . will continue to cause the largest share of human-induced radiative forcing, that is, the retention of heat that can lead to atmospheric increases” (Chandler, 1990, p. 2) and because it is even more problematic to try and calculate the costs and benefits of non-CO2 GAG than it is for CO2. Also note that figures in this paper related to CO2 emissions refer to tons of Carbon, even though CO2 is used. To actually get the true weight of CO2 one would multiply by the factor of 3.66 or 44/12 since Oxygen has an atomic weight of 16 and Carbon has an atomic weight of 12. Another problem in applying cost-benefit analysis to the environment is the consumer surplus issue. People can easily be “confused by the fact that important goods like air and water are free or inexpensive . . . because they do not understand that the equilibrium price of a good does not measure its importance to people . . . the equilibrium price of diamonds (per ounce) exceeds the equilibrium price of clean water (per ounce). Consumer surplus for water [i.e., the benefit to a consumer of being able to buy a good at the equilibrium price as opposed to being unable to buy it at all], however, is much larger than the consumer surplus for diamonds; in that sense, water is more valuable” (Stockman, 1996, p. 234). Or, as it has been more eloquently
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13.
14.
15.
16. 17. 18.
19.
21
put, “the labor of nature is paid, not because she does much, but because she does little. In proportion as she becomes niggardly in her gifts, she exacts a greater price for her work. Where she is munificently beneficent she always works gratis” (D. Ricardo quoted in Siebert, 1995). Such issues are associated with all environmental problems but GAGs add their own unique conundrums because climate change is “the prototype of the global commons issue. All nations are affected by the earth’s climate system, and broad international cooperation is required to mitigate the threat of global warming” (Porter and Brown, 1991, p. 92). Nordhaus claims that “no issue has raised more concern and confusion than the question of the appropriate discounting of the future” (Nordhaus, 1994, p. 122). Actually there is another question to ask about an inheritance—who died? I am assuming that the decedent, that is, the entity responsible for making payments in accordance with the inheritance, is the nation where the emissions are taking place. Although the emitters are most probably corporations and individuals, such emissions are being done under the laws and control of nations and it is up to them to be responsible for same. It is perhaps not surprising that there are different quantitative methods of interpreting CHM. As one commentator has cautioned with regard to discussing global constraints related to the environment, “We should not expect to discover a single, universally applicable formula” (Ogley, 1996, p. 167). Since the total monetary value of the entitlements under SUSTAIN is negative, such monies could be paid to an internal organization with the responsibility to reduce the effects of GHG (though nations with a positive entitlement could receive it and be responsible for their own damage/abatement activities). Of course, there are other ways of considering entitlement. For example, Cline (1992, p. 353) suggests that a nation’s GDP could be a potential basis for a quota allocation. This approach acts to partially “grandfather-in” existing CO2 emissions since they are generally correlated with national GDPs. Alternatively, one could use an entitlement scale similar to the “global assessment scale laid down by the U.N. General Assembly, which rates countries according to a combination of economic, geographic and demographic criteria” (Sand, 1991, p. 235). However, for simplicity’s sake discussion is limited to those possibilities that seem most clearly related to the different definitions of CHM postulated herein. Admittedly benefit is calculated in an economic sense and does not include other factors such as spiritual, aesthetic, or moral benefits in emissions reductions. Conversation with Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, Tim Wirth, on April 7, 1997. It should be noted that this is not the same as the cost of creating CO2 abatement measures but instead is the loss to the economy that would result after abatements are made. It is, in other words, the overall benefit received by an economy by virtue of being able to emit CO2. The fact that the overall economy benefits from CO2 emissions also lends support to the idea that it is appropriate for a nation to be the decedent, that is, the entity who is responsible for making payments in accordance with the inheritance. The harm component of the SUSTAIN value has a (relatively, for environmental issues) long historical tradition in environmental treaties and laws. This international version of the “Golden Rule” acquired some global credibility during the Pax Britannica of the 1800s in which “the view that you should not seek your advantage by causing detriment to other peoples became generally the accepted policy of the [British] empire”(Collis, 1946). For example, since the creation of the Rhine Commission in 1815, international river commissions have developed more than 2,000 treaties regulating rights to shared waters (Imber, 1996, p. 141) and the only principle that has emerged from all these treaties is that
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20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
countries should “avoid harming downstream states” (Porter and Brown, 1991, p. 157). The passage of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 by the United States was also a clear affirmation of this principle as it directed U.S. federal agencies to support international cooperation in “anticipating and preventing a decline in the quality of mankind’s world environment” (Porter and Brown, 1991, p. 24). But it was the first U.N. Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972 during which this principle was most clearly and specifically articulated. Principle 21 of the Stockholm Declaration states that nations have “the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction and control did not cause damage to the environment of other States or of other areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.” These areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction are, in other words, “the global commons, such as the atmosphere and the oceans” (Humphreys, 1996, p. 216). One might argue that under SUSTAIN the company would pay for the cleanup, under ECON the land would be bought for $10,000, and under FAIR the company would pay the owner based on the profits made by the mining. One proposal has been made which would incorporate both damage and abatement costs in a surprising way; “an international fund [would] be established to which the polluting country would pay according to its assessment of the damages and the victimized land would pay according to its assessment of the costs of abatement . . . The funds collected from the two parties would then be redistributed to them for implementation of the environmental protection measures” (Siebert, 1995, p. 195). The goal of this would be to reduce the infomation asymmetries that encourage there to be an exaggeration of harms and costs of abatement. Cline also points out that “as a general rule one would expect the economic size of damage from global warming to rise more than linearly with the magnitude of the warming. The costs of 10°C warming in the very long term could thus be far more than four times the costs of the 2.5°C benchmark warming for a doubling of carbon dioxide-equivalent” (p. 72). Progress on the Convention on Climate Control, and particularly the Clinton Administration’s 1993 Earth Day Message in which the policy of stabilizing GHG at 1990 levels was proposed (Nordhaus, 1994, p. 80), suggests that such an agreement may be possible. Even though the damage to the GDP may not take place for some years, when it does it will be occurring on an ongoing basis. So if, for example, CO2 doubles in ten years and maintains that level thereafter one would be responsible for the cost of damage in the year 2005 in 1995, for $2006 billion in 1996, etc. Although this does not properly discount the value of the damage, one may, very roughly, assume that the discount factor may be balanced by the damage caused between each of the first ten years and their later counterparts. The theoretical underpinning for the TDP system is the Coase theorem which states that if exclusive property rights to the environment are defined and transferable with no transaction costs then a bargaining solution among different users of the environment will result in a Pareto-optimal allocation of the environmental resource which is independent of the initial allocation of property rights (Siebert, 1995, p. 99). However, the exact Pareto-optimal allocation one ends up with will be a function of the initial allocation of property rights which is why “the very first step of the program is one of potentially great controversy: what formula to use to make the original distribution of emission rights” (Field, 1994, p. 253). In whatever method the original allocative system is agreed upon, the closer one comes to a perfect Coase market the better the system will operate.
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26. If such an internal TDP system could effectively be established one can imagine that “under such a system, Japan (which would find it expensive to reduce its output of gases) might buy permits from Poland (which would find it inexpensive, as long as it had the cash that a permit sale would bring in). Or Britain’s National Power might reforest a stretch of Brazil with trees that would mop up carbon dioxide in exchange for being able to build another coalfired power station . . . best of all, a company in America making refrigerators might set up a subsidiary in India to make refrigerators there too . . . thus a system of tradable permits could, in theory, give companies with energy-efficient technologies a big incentive to transfer their technologies to less efficient countries in the third world and Eastern Europe” (Cairncross, 1992, p. 171). 27. This is a limited grandfathering-in of current emissions. Although it is somewhat disadvantageous to developing countries to the extent they do emit CO2 they may be able to make more effective reductions than developed countries ultimately giving them a positive monetary entitlement. 28. If the results are too financially onerous for developing nations one might track back 10–25 years and cumulatively make a determination of past emissions behavior which could reduce the emissions share used by developing nations relative to developed nations even further.
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Y CHAPTER TWO
ALL COMMONS ARE LOCAL The Antarctic Treaty System as a Regional Model for Effective Environmental Management Gianfranco Corti
ince the Stockholm convention in 1972, environmental management has been seen as a supranational responsibility requiring collective action by sovereign states. The global nature of environmental degradation has spurred the search for universal norms and institutions to regulate the use of natural resources and ensure sustainable development on a worldwide basis. While many states have concluded functional agreements on a bilateral or regional basis, the dominant approach to international environmental management from Stockholm to Rio has favored global, U.N.-based treaty making as the main pillar of sustainability. Expressions like global commons or the common heritage of mankind—formally adopted by UNCLOS III to designate the deep seabed—increasingly shape public discourse on the environment. In the eyes of many, only those environmental regimes claiming the U.N.’s all-inclusive membership can muster the legitimacy and the operational capacity to balance human needs with the conservation of the earth’s vital resources. This chapter challenges the appropriateness of globalizing the ownership of transnational resources and thus the operational responsibility for environmental management. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I argue that the quest for global solutions to the degradation of transnational ecosystems is unworkable and theoretically ill-grounded. The belief that there exists a positive relationship between the geographical scope of international action and the utility of environmental regimes is erroneous. The relationship is actually negative.
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Whatever the magnitude of the challenge, collective action on the environment is more likely to produce results if and when it is limited to a level of international ownership that is less than global. The United Nations and its various agencies remain invaluable fora for the identification and discussion of global problems. It would be difficult to conceive of another organization in which all countries can express their views on all questions of national and international concern. But, whatever its merits as a global sounding board, the United Nations is culturally and institutionally ill-suited to formulate and monitor—let alone, enforce—a series of worldwide environmental regimes. Commons, in the sense of collective arrangements for the sustainable exploitation of common-pool resources (CPRs), function on the basis of bounded membership, controlled access, and a strong corporate identity. To speak of global commons is essentially a contradiction in terms, for all commons are notionally local: that is, restricted to a community of insiders. Given the practical impossibility of restricting United Nations membership and the anarchic nature of the international state-system, those who care about the environment had better shelve the search for global solutions and concentrate instead on the improvement of decentralized, sub-global regimes: local commons on a grander scale. The case of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) shows how a compact of diverse states, acting outside and independently of the U.N. system, can successfully preserve a vast and fragile ecosystem as an oasis of peace, cooperative scientific research, and environmental protection. It also demonstrates that the narrowness of the commons, both as social body and resource-pool, is not incompatible with either internal growth or the development of some semblance of external accountability. Since the time of its foundation in 1959, the ATS has gradually expanded its membership and competencies beyond its original mandate. While the parties to the Antarctic regime have jealously guarded their decisional and operational autonomy, they have made their actions more transparent and more responsive to the environmental concerns of outside actors. The end result is that the ATS now stands as a large local commons where collective action pays good dividends to the member-states without causing any losses or prejudice to nonmembers.
Back to the Future: The Commons as a Metaphor for Sustainable Environmental Management Environmental scientists have made frequent reference to the commons as an explanatory metaphor for either the use or the abuse of common resource pools. The man responsible for starting something of a trend on the conceptual
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significance of the commons for environmental management was Garret Hardin. In 1968, in the pre-Stockholm era of environmentalism, Hardin published an article entitled “The Tragedy of the Commons.” In it, Hardin argued that the logic of communal land holding, on which commons arrangements were based, was fatally flawed. Rational individuals, having unrestricted access to a common resource pool, would want to increase their private utility at the cost of depleting and eventually exhausting the commons. Hardin went on to advocate enclosure—that is, breaking up and privatizing the commons—as the preferred solution to what he regarded as the inevitable abuse of communal property by rational individuals.1 Hardin’s blanket indictment of the commons as a major cause of environmental degradation showed a cavalier disregard for historical reality and an egregious misunderstanding of the social and economic organization of the commons. In spite of the article’s wide echo and enduring popularity, a number of commentators were soon finding fault with both the evidence and the logic of Hardin’s argument. Against Hardin, they argued that self-organization could work and that communal land holding did not necessarily lead to overexploitation. In the management of resources that various communities considered indivisible or, in any case, not subject to the strictures of private property, the logic of the commons had often been the mainstay of efficient and sustainable usage (Ostrom, 1990; Bullock and Baden, 1977). Post-Hardin environmental scholarship on the commons, most notably the work of Elinor Ostrom, has correctly stressed the capacity of interested individuals to regulate the allocation of common resources independently of any central authority or external enforcement. But even the revisionist interpretation of the commons as an environmentally viable institution does not fully account for the bounded membership of communal resource pools. To make matters worse, the new modeling also misses the distinctiveness of the rights of commons and their complementary relationship with ownership arrangements based on the modern (and Roman) notion of private property. Historical evidence on the commons, which is particularly abundant for medieval and early modern Europe, proves conclusively that the commons thrived for several centuries on assumptions that substantially differed not only from Hardin’s tragic scenario but also from Ostrom’s more optimistic cooperative hypothesis (Bloch, 1931; Reynolds, 1984). The first assumption that needs to be true for a commons to exist is that it belong to a clearly identifiable community. In the legalistic language of Roman lawyers, a commons constitutes a res communis, not, as Hardin wrongly assumed, a res nullius. The distinction between a commons and the sort of wide-open dumping ground that Hardin envisaged is critical for understanding the inner logic and the staying power of commons arrangements. Bounded membership and
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controlled access are the indispensable structural features of each and every commons. Hardin’s conflation of commons with cesspools was a case of flat-out mistaken identity. However, Elmor Ostrom’s characterization of CPRs as a hybrid category of goods—public in terms of their provision and nonexclusiveness, yet private in the rival consumption of their flow—is also wide off the mark. Ostrom’s dubious attempt to use microeconomic theory to make sense of the commons all but ignores the social constraints and legal rules that limited the common-pool entitlement of each individual or household. In light of Ostrom’s own appreciation for institutionally robust CPRs, it is disappointing to notice her refusal to consign Hardin’s myth of the open commons to the dustbin of poor scholarship (Ostrom, 1977; McGinnis and Ostrom, 1993).2 It is critical to understand the precise nature of the rights of commons. In what sense does a commons belong to a group of beneficiaries? What stake does the community have in the joint preservation of the collective resource? The answer to these questions constitutes the second working assumption of a commons arrangement: The commoners do not own the land in full and unconditional ownership, but merely hold it in permanent use under communal governance. In their capacity as members in good standing of the local community, the stakeholders enjoy a well-defined right of usufruct over the collective resource, and are simultaneously charged with managing it through communally sanctioned norms and institutions. This sort of arrangement has been compared to a permanent trusteeship over natural resources. The analogy is well taken insofar as it emphasizes the conditional nature of the collective right of possessing the resource—a right that falls short of full ownership. However, the comparison with trusteeship is misleading if it is meant to suggest that the stakeholders hold the commons of and for some external actor who, in turn, owns the land. It is true that, in medieval and early modern Europe, villagers would often pay a customary levy to the local lord for their use of the communal land. However, even when this levy was referred to as rent, its payment only meant that the lord had a concomitant right to the commons, not a superior claim over it. The lord did not own the commons any more than the local villagers would; for centuries, he could not legally enclose or sell any part of the common resource. A formal right of possession that differed from full ownership in being conditional and necessarily shared with other claimants may strike us as odd and impractical. However, it is worth remembering that such messy rights of joint possession were commonplace in pre-modern—that is, pre-capitalist—Europe. Without the notion of multiple, concomitant holdings, the feudal system’s economic and political structure would not have been possible.
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The third assumption follows from the second and postulates that the commons, for all their institutional distinctiveness, do not stand in isolation from— much less in irreconcilable opposition to—a market-driven system of clearly defined and mutually exclusive property rights. Once again, the evidence from medieval and early-modern Europe proves the viability of a mixed system where the socially regulated management of CPRs supplemented the private exploitation of individual or family-owned property. In a balanced system of resource management, commons and private property ought to complement each other. Full and exclusive rights of ownership, be they exercised by individuals, corporations, or states, make sense when resources can be divided and property rights clearly allocated in a manner that preserves the resource’s full value. However, this is plainly not the case with a communal pasture, medieval openfield agriculture, or an ecosystem. In these instances, breaking up the whole into separate shares would diminish, and in some cases, even wipe out, the value that each user could have extracted from the resource (Young, 1994). One needs neither primitive communism nor centralized management to justify the permanence of locally based and functionally focused commons. Conversely, the existence of utility-maximizing individuals is no bar to the stipulation of communal regimes for the administration of CPRs. Under the assumptions formulated above— bounded membership, joint exploitation, and availability of their own resources outside the commons-individual utility—maximizers would find it in their best interest to exercise multiple, overlapping, and conditional rights of usage over an undivided resource pool. By the twelfth century, commons designed along the principles that I have been illustrating were an integral part of the economic and social landscape of Western and Central Europe. Their rights and obligations were recognized by custom and were beginning to be recorded in writing as the statutory law of countless local and regional communities. Beside woods and pastures, commons would typically include streams and roads as well as portions of the arable land. Contrary to Hardin’s view that rising population would bring to a boil the simmering conflict between individual usufruct and communal ownership, commons came to full institutional development in a period (1100 to 1300) of unprecedented demographic growth in the history of Europe (Reynolds, 1984). In the sixteenth century, the rights of commons came under increasing attack from the landed aristocracy. By about 1750, after a long and sometimes violent historical process, the success of the enclosure movement was complete. Except in remote mountain areas, commons had been broken up and privatized, mostly by powerful outsiders who, having won ownership of the land, turned it to animal husbandry and the intensive cultivation of speculative crops.
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The historical interest of the commons as an example of communally enforced sustainability does not automatically imply their usefulness as a model for international environmental management. While the substantive nature, if not the scale, of commons arrangements is analogous to that of transnational environmental regimes, the actors and the representation of interests is not the same. For the local model of the medieval commons to be applicable at the grand level of international relations, two additional conditions must be met. The first, an analogy between private property and national sovereignty, presents few theoretical problems. In their exclusive and unconditional nature, states’ rights of territorial jurisdiction mirror individual rights of ownership over private property. The second analogy, between individual and state actors, is more problematic. It treats states as though they were unitary actors and discounts the possibility that national decision makers might behave more like agents than principals. Despite these ontological disparities, however, state parties to a regime and individual stakeholders in a commons do face an identical predicament: selforganization in the absence of external enforcement (McGinnis and Ostrom, 1993). The analogy between states and individuals in a situation of collective action under anarchy seems plausible enough to apply the lessons of the commons to the world of interstate environmental regimes. At any rate this is the opinion of both environmental scholars and international relations specialists who have looked at the commons for inspiration. What can environmental policy makers and international negotiators learn from the commons? The first and most important lesson that emerges from an informed, contextual analysis of the commons is that a system of open and unconditional membership is incompatible with self-organization. To admit the institutional existence of global—that is, unbounded and unconditional— commons is tantamount to abdicating our collective responsibility to preserve the earth’s resources. A U.N.-based approach to treaty making for the environment, especially the search for common-heritage regimes, is the least likely to generate a spirit of responsible and enterprising partnership among sovereign states. If participation in a regime is cost-free and its benefits accrue indiscriminately to everyone— insiders and outsiders, leaders or laggards—there is no commons, only a thinly disguised, opportunistic attempt to maximize each actor’s individual utility. Given a flawed structural design, procedural reform, no matter how well thought out, will not succeed in producing an effective mechanism of social compliance. The shortcomings of the present system for global environmental treaty making are well known. Ideas are routinely watered down to the lowest common
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denominator that would satisfy every state. Free riding and noncompliance abound. No significant action can be taken except reactively, in response to a situation that has been allowed to deteriorate beyond control. To make matters worse, the decision-making machinery is lethargic and legalistic, weighed down by layers of international civil servants vying for bureaucratic control. There is general agreement that we can do better in managing the environment, but that the likelihood of improvement rests on our ability to inject greater flexibility and accountability into the system. This, in turn cannot be achieved until and unless we find a way to make all state participants to a regime feel responsible for its success. To date, the Salzburg Initiative constitutes the most comprehensive and, arguably, the most thoughtful proposal for reforming the global environmental system.3 While it accepts the principle of using the U.N. system to manage the global environment, the Salzburg Initiative’s first recommendation calls for the building of decentralized alliances on a (bio)regional basis. Effective environmental treaty making is said to be contingent on a bottom-up approach, in which coalitions of state actors sharing similar interests come together as likeminded stakeholders. This corporate like-mindedness is analogous to the communal solidarity that we see at work in a local commons. The independent actors who coalesce in a decentralized alliance fully retain their individuality. But the pull of overlapping and mutually reinforcing interests in a functional area impels them to prefer collective to individual action in that particular domain. Voluntary cooperation based on trust and generalized reciprocity becomes everyone’s dominant strategy. Decentralized alliances do not, however, expand at will, nor do they easily add up to a global coalition. In thinking that they could, the framers of the Salzburg Initiative unduly discount—in the manner of Elinor Ostrom—the exclusiveness of self-organizing and self-enforcing common-pool institutions. In sum, membership in a commons has its privileges, its requirements, and its own self-interested logic. It cannot be freely bestowed on strangers. Yet, as the case of the Antarctic Treaty System bears out, sufficiently motivated outsiders can buy their way into the club.
The Antarctic Treaty System as a Model for Decentralized Environmental Management The Antarctic Treaty System is an intergovernmental regime for the regulation of human activity and interstate relations on all lands and waters lying south of 60° S latitude. The geographical scope of the regime is huge, comprising about one tenth of the Earth’s surface, but does not extend to the number of
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sub-Antarctic islands—for example, the Falklands—which have long been the subject of bitter territorial disputes (Peterson, 1988). The system is the sum total of a series of legal instruments, norms, and institutions that have developed incrementally over the years. Its foundation stone is the 1959 Antarctic Treaty that, at the height of the Cold War, pledged the United States, the Soviet Union, and ten other states showing concrete interests in Antarctica, to the preservation of the continent as a nonmilitarized zone of peace and international scientific cooperation.4 Environmental management did not figure among the explicit goals of the 1959 Treaty but has been the focus of increasing attention since the 1970s. The instrument of choice to fill the environmental gaps in the ATS is the international convention. Consensually agreed to by the representatives of the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs)—member states with full voting rights—Antarctic conventions must in due course be ratified by the national legislatures of each ATCP. Among the ATS’s significant contributions to natural resource management, the cumbersomely named Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), deserves special mention for introducing an ecosystem approach to the harvesting of target species. The later, and institutionally more ambitious, Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities (CRAMRA), signed by the ATCPs in 1988, has been shelved indefinitely by the refusal of Australia and France to ratify it. Its stillbirth, however, has spun the passage of the 1991 Madrid Protocol, banning all mineral prospecting in the area covered by the Treaty for a period of 50 years, and the acceptance by the original member-states of a more open and transparent model of decision making.5 From the description given above, it should be clear that the ATS is part and parcel of the current international system. Like any other intergovernmental regime, it operates on consensus and depends on the voluntary cooperation of its individual members. Furthermore, the ATS also relies on those frayed instruments of international policy making, most notably the framework convention, that bedevil rational decision making and impede timely implementation. Despite these formidable constraints, the ATS works faster and more proactively than most other regimes. Its actions are more substantive and carry far less ideological baggage than those of the United Nations. While no state, not even those that are geographically closest to the South Pole, would consider the ATS the centerpiece of its foreign policy, the Antarctic regime has managed to grow in membership, stature, and competencies. It has also shown that it can withstand with impunity a war between member states waged just outside the treaty area and a take-over attempt by the United Nations.6 The viability of the ATS as an international regime makes sense in term of the commons model that I discussed in this chapter. First and foremost, the
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consultative parties to the ATS constitute “an Antarctic community that . . . share[s] the continent and its governance” (Peterson, 1988, p. 41). Full membership (consultative party status in the language of the ATS) was originally limited to those twelve countries that had sponsored year-round Antarctic research during the 1958 International Geophysical Year. Article IX(2) of the Treaty makes the test of substantial research activity the necessary condition for any would-be member to accede to the Antarctic Treaty as a consultative party. Second, while the parties reserved to themselves the right to manage the entire area south of 60S latitude, they were careful not to divide the Antarctic commons into individually owned shares. This sort of self-restraint is all the more remarkable considering that seven of the original signatories held preexisting territorial claims to Antarctica. In addition, the two superpowers reserved the right to put forth such claims at any time. Yet, article IV froze the sovereignty issue for the duration of an open-ended agreement subject to periodic reviews. Many commentators have considered the decision to hold all territorial claims in permanent but conditional abeyance to be an unsatisfactory camouflaging of substantive differences. In reality, article IV reflects the parties’ realization that multilateral cooperation can only occur between self-interested actors who do not renounce but, as it were, reciprocally suspend their individuality for the accomplishment of specific purposes. By circumventing all questions of ownership and focusing instead on the rights of participation and self-management, the ATS gives formal expression to the functional logic of the commons. Nobody really owns Antarctica, and, contrary to the common-heritage argument, there is no good reason why anybody should. As things stand, the continent belongs to a community of interested stakeholders who are responsible for the conservation of its valuable resources. The ATS regime fits the general model of the functional, community-based commons, but its usefulness is not limited by it. Since 1959, its membership, though bounded and conditional, has managed to become more inclusive and accountable to the outside world. The seeds of inclusiveness were embedded in the 1959 Treaty. The original twelve formed an exceptionally heterogeneous coalition of states. The compact included the then bitterly hostile United States and Soviet Union, six Western allies of the former, Japan, the hard-to-categorize and soon pariah state of South Africa, and the developing but relatively well-off South American nations of Chile and Argentina. Internal differences between claimant and non-claimant states worked at cross purposes with more “normal” coalitional patterns based on ideology, history, or the level of economic development. From the beginning, the consultative parties formed a club of self-appointed guardians of Antarctica. However, the exclusiveness of the group was tempered by the specification of objective criteria for
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admission and by an open system of access that permitted any state to apply for membership. The Antarctic Treaty was also notable and innovative in setting up a twotiered system of membership. Participation in decision making was reserved for consultative parties who had: (a) signed the original treaty or later acceded to it; and (b) demonstrated an “interest in Antarctica by conducting substantial scientific research there, such as the establishment of a scientific station or the dispatch of a scientific expedition” (Antarctic Treaty, art. IX(2)). A lower level of membership, nonconsultative status, was recognized for states which had acceded to the Treaty but, for whatever reason, had not been able to meet the requirement of substantial scientific activity. Before 1983, when negotiations on CRAMRA, the mineral convention, began, nonconsultative members (ATNCPs) were completely shut out from the decision-making process since they could neither vote nor attend the consultative meetings of the ATS. Partly in response to the U.N. General Assembly’s attack on the exclusiveness of the Antarctic regime, the consultative parties decided in 1983–84 to allow the ATNCPs to attend consultative meetings and negotiating sessions on resource conventions. Given the ATS rule of consensus decision making, the ability to participate in the discussions now gives the ATNCPs a not-inconsiderable say in the governance of the Antarctic (Peterson, 1988; Laws, 1990; Beeby, 1991). A further characteristic that explains the ATS’s ability to grow beyond its original mandate, respond to challenges, and take preventative action on the environment is its structural and procedural reliance on cooperative scientific research. The origins of the Antarctic Treaty lie in the International Geophysical Year of 1958. Because of its success, the participant states determined to institutionalize a liberal scientific regime based on freedom of movement and shared information. While the importance of security and environmental concerns has varied through the years, the promotion of science has remained the ATS’s constant preoccupation. Science, or rather its pursuit, underlies the whole structure of the regime, since scientific research is the requirement for full participation in the ATS. This is, as Oliver Schram Stokke has pointed out, an activity criterion for membership: Antarctic rights and responsibilities depend on what people do there rather than ex-ante considerations of state power or national identity. Procedurally, science is the engine that drives the system forward. SCAR, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, functions as the advisory body to the consultative parties. The close working relationship between SCAR and ATS is essential to the effective management of Antarctica. Yet SCAR, as an organ of the International Council of Scientific Unions, retains its institutional independence from the ATS and the politics of intergovernmental decision making. Being a nonpolitical body made up of international scientists, SCAR can present
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all parties with the full spectrum of scientific evidence on Antarctica. By relying on SCAR for issue definition and objective fact finding, the ATS has avoided the danger of turning Antarctica into yet another battleground for advocacy science.
Recommendations The success of the Antarctic Commons supports the case for the viability of other decentralized environmental regimes. The robustness and adaptability of the Antarctic regime cannot be imputed to common geopolitical interests. The member states share neither common interests nor a single regional identity. Nevertheless, they have demonstrated a commitment to put their differences aside and act constructively in Antarctica for the preservation of that continent. The lessons of international cooperation in Antarctica can be distilled into six design principles that will lead to the formulation of more effective environmental treaties and policies. Ideally, the implementation of these principles will increase our collective ability to upgrade the quality of environmental protection across national borders. Lateral Regime Building International regimes work best when collective action is channeled into discrete, issue-oriented sectors. When hammering together an environmental treaty, international negotiators should never lose sight of the potential for a cooperative regime to expand sideways into adjacent but distinct sectors. The process of functional spill-over takes place at least as easily horizontally as it does vertically. The convention-protocol schema can be used to ratchet up over time the quality and the impact of framework agreements that had been agreed to only as toothless declarations of principles. There is, however, another way to allow for regime growth. Treaty makers may want to design conventions that are more explicit in spelling out commitments, but that purposely refrain from covering more than two or three narrowly defined issues. If the ATS experience is any guide, leaving obvious gaps in the range of subjects that a convention might cover will put pressure on the parties to add new substantive planks to the original regime. Successful cooperation in one area should lead to collective action into other domains not originally conceived as subjects of collective action. The extension of cooperation would respond to the psychological phenomenon of social learning whereby people tend to replicate successful behavior that has worked in the past regardless of the situation.
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Valuable Membership Under no circumstances should full membership in the organization be made freely available. The regime must have clear, if variable, boundaries separating participants from nonparticipants. Admission should come at a price, to be measured objectively as the ongoing performance of pro-environment behavior that imposes some cost on the member state. While a differential scale may be agreed upon to offset the lesser ability to pay of poorer countries, no state must have the benefits of membership bestowed upon it as a costless entitlement. Restricting access to only those willing to pay would make membership look more valuable to its members and generate a sense of individual and collective commitment to the success of the organization. On substantive grounds, a membership fee or litmus test would also narrow the range of concrete interests represented in the regime. This, in turn, should speed up decision making and increase its efficiency. Nondiscriminatory and Nonconventional Groupings To promote global environmental welfare, treaty designers should set up ecoregional alliances that, while internally cohesive, do not dump on the outside world. Intergroup discrimination can be a serious problem with conventional trade blocs that tend to pursue a competitive strategy of relative gains against the rest of the world. Experimental social psychology research on minimum groups shows that, even when corporate identity is minimal, in-group favoritism and out-group discrimination is the norm (Mercer, 1995). To offset, or at least minimize, the tendency for an eco-regional alliance to seek relative environmental gains, the alliance must be kept open to all qualified applicants regardless of their geopolitical affiliation. Outsiders should be able to join the in-group at any time, provided that they meet the functional criterion for admission. Cultural, political, and economic heterogeneity within the group should be seen as a source of creativity and as a means to undercut the centrifugal pull of traditional global alignments (for example, North vs. South; East vs. West). Transparency and Accountability to the Outside World Clearly defined environmental responsibility does not mean full and unconditional ownership of natural resources. Policy decisions should be taken by member states under the scrutiny and with the advice of looming outsiders: NGOs, international organizations, and at least some other state actors (Stokke, 1991). These parties—selected on the basis of their technical expertise and substantive interest in the regime—should be granted formal observer status to the meetings of the member states. Their input would improve the quality and the transparency
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of the decision-making process. NGOs could also play a crucial role in monitoring compliance across and within national borders (Susskind, 1994). Concerning state actors, treaty makers may want to expand international participation by granting different levels of memberships to various states on the basis of what they could contribute to the regime. In any case, decision-making power (that is, the right to vote) should be reserved for only those states that are full members to the regime. Inquisitorial Fact Finding and Monitoring Negotiating international environmental treaties is hard enough without having to choose between selective and competing presentations of the available evidence. Questions of environmental management typically involve high levels of technical complexity and scientific uncertainty. Diplomats are held hostages to partial and tendentious interpretations of the facts by partisan advocates. Those familiar with the Anglo-American system of law would recognize in advocacy science the procedural model of the adversarial trial system. In an AngloAmerican court of law, there are two dueling sides, picking certain evidence to present and slanting it at will to support their mutually exclusive cases. It has been pointed out that “the adversarial system encourages a selective, biased approach to the gathering, interpretation, and presentation of evidence” (Zimbardo and Lieppe, 1991, p. 293). Advocacy science uses the same adversarial procedure for researching, presenting, and monitoring the scientific evidence on which environmental choices should be made. As an added complication, environmental negotiations often involve more than two sides fighting to accredit their version of the truth. The struggle resembles more a melee than a duel. By contrast, the inquisitorial model of legal procedure, practiced in Continental Europe and her former possessions, charges impartial representatives of the court with investigating the facts of the case. The inquisitorial model thus encourages a “disinterested, objective, and systematic appraisal of evidence” (Zimbardo and Lieppe, 1991). Clearly, the second procedure would provide environmental decision makers with clearer and more reliable information than they could glean from an adversarial process dominated by scientific advocates. By entrusting the collection, presentation, and monitoring of scientific evidence to an independent body of international scientists, SCAR, the ATS has managed to place decision making on a much sounder factual footing than most other environmental regimes. Any environmental regime that wants to maximize the utility of expert opinion for policy formulation should be geared to a systematic, nonconflictual system
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of inquiry broadly representative of scientific opinion. In sum, make science play the role of the inquisitor! Decentralized Self-complying and Self-enforcing Alliances The problem of self-organization under anarchy is a vexed question of both sociological analysis and international relations theory. The best approach is based on practical observation: Sovereign states are capable of cooperating of their own volition in the absence of either a supranational authority or an external power that would force them to do so. In practice, sovereign states will be willing to take collective action if the conditions for such cooperation exist in the present and will remain in operation for the foreseeable future. As one would expect, the greater the benefits that a state might derive from a multilateral endeavor, the more appealing collective action will appear to that state. However, the cost-benefit calculations of each state are not independent of situational considerations. As Elinor Ostrom has argued in the case of small-scale CPRs, credible enforcement is crucial in fostering a constructive atmosphere of contingent quasi-voluntary compliance among fellow CPR users (Ostrom, 1990, pp. 94–100). An appropriator who favors cooperation but fears that others will be able to cheat with impunity faces a powerful incentive to defect. While freely made, the decision to collaborate is only quasi-voluntary: it is contingent on the rational expectation that one’s partners will generally refrain from acting opportunistically. In the second recommendation above, I have stressed the importance of fostering in each member state a feeling of corporate responsibility for the transnational regime. I have laid particular emphasis on the psychological and organizational importance of setting clear boundaries that limit participation in environmental regimes to a self-conscious community of individual stakeholders. I would add here, following Ostrom’s model of quasi-voluntary compliance, the need to embed reciprocal monitoring into the appropriation routine of the member states. Inspection, reporting, and the assessment of eventual penalties against rule breakers should not be entrusted to supranational observers as is the case with the United Nations and most other international organizations. On the contrary, the task of policing the agreement should be carried out directly by the national appropriators serving, as it were, as each other’s proctors. Besides encouraging compliance, a system of participatory communal policing will be the cheapest and most effective means of providing all members with credible information on both their partners’ behavior and the current state of the CPR. Barring radical changes in the nature of the international system, U.N.-based regimes could scarcely be expected to serve as the most effective basis for decentralized self-monitoring and self-enforcement. Global regimes lack both a strong
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sense of community and the institutional mechanisms that would allow embedded mutual surveillance to be built into the process of using the commons. Among intergovernmental compacts, it is eco-regional alliances in the style of the ATS that—by virtue of their limited membership, functional orientation, and bureaucratic streamlining—will be most likely to capitalize on the collaborative potential of self-monitoring and self-enforcement routines. In a decentralized eco-regional community, the sum of organizational and socio-psychological forces would work to produce the highest level of proactive compliance. The national interest of each state would be best served by the joint pursuit of an agreed upon and specifically targeted collective agenda. Direct accountability to one’s partners will increase trust in each other and in the general fairness of the regime. Finally, shaming would add up to a more painful deterrent against free-riding than in more bureaucratically centralized, unbounded regimes of the U.N. variety.
Eco-regionalism Beyond the ATS This chapter has presented a rationale for favoring a regional approach to the solution of global environmental problems. Borrowing from the historical model of the commons, the chapter has detailed the viability of collective governance within a functionally defined community of stakeholders. Boundless or open-ended commons are a contradiction in terms because clear boundaries define the resource-pool, its users, and the rules of appropriation. All commons are notionally local. None can be operationalized on a global scale without destroying both the resource pool and the potential for collective action. The case of the ATS demonstrates that it is possible for a large regional commons to maintain a high level of internal cooperation without adding to the existing asymmetry of the international system. What is less clear is the extent to which the positive example of the ATS can be replicated through the multiplication of similarly constructed ecoregional regimes. The eco-regionalism of the ATS is very different from the interest-based, value-laden, and tendentially discriminatory regionalism of the conventional blocs. If carried out by political and economic partners, regional cooperation on the environment can all too easily play out as a zero-sum game between competing groups of nations. The 1984 OECD draft regulation on the transboundary shipment of hazardous waste is a case in point. The proposal expressed the greater ability of industrial nations to take positive action on the environment than the full membership of the United Nations. However, tightened waste control within the OECD would only have helped to redirect the flow of hazardous material from
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the North to the South. Opposition to the OECD draft regulation by developing countries led to its replacement by the milder but universally applicable Basel Convention. Though less stringent, a global approach to the shipment of hazardous waste proved more efficient than a regional solution that would have imposed substantial externalities on nonparticipants (Sand, 1991, pp. 247–248). As explained in recommendation number three, the danger of intergroup discrimination is minimized by the creation of eco- or bioregional commons whose membership cuts across traditional alignments. The ATS is a striking example of a nonconventional grouping of states that transcends political, ideological, or economic divisions. However, in a fractious international system, nontraditional environmental compacts are neither common nor easy to assemble. To date, only UNEP’s regional sea agreements resemble the ATS in both their diverse membership and functional bioregionalism. Despite the encouraging example of the Mediterranean Action Plan, it remains easier to bring together allied countries that share common interests, values, and a pre-existing habit of collaboration than estranged neighbors. As a form of globally sustainable environmental management, regionalism thus faces a legacy of poor team selection. Its most willing recruits do not spontaneously line up in the sort of balanced and nondiscriminatory formations that would be most likely to advance universal welfare. While internal heterogeneity raises the global utility of a regional environmental regime, the differences between the parties in terms of individual identity and outside interests may also increase the chances of stalemate. If the ATCPs are so different from each other to constitute, in terms of membership, a mini-United Nations, what makes the ATS a qualitatively more efficient organization than the United Nations? A smaller membership clearly helps in making self-organization work. So does an issue-specific, as opposed to a rhetorical, focus. But the structural feature that is most conducive to self-organization is operational decentralization. What undercuts the United Nations from actually taking, as opposed to promising, collective action is its dependence on bureaucratic management and supervision of operations. Bureaucratization is, of course, a form of centralization designed for the administration of unitary states; it is spectacularly ill-suited to decentralized governance. The success of the ATS rests in large measure on the congruence between its diffuse system of decision making and the equally diffuse means and procedures to implement those decisions. Collective action can be sustained, even in very sizable commons, if the principals are given ownership of and full responsibility over the entire process of producing and appropriating joint benefits. Finally, is the appropriateness of a regional approach a function of the type of environmental issues that each regime is concerned with? The ATS is a forwardlooking resource-conservation regime. Its most important planks, in particular the
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moratorium on minerals extraction, oblige its members to refrain from reaping some future gains that, though likely, are as of yet uncertain. Unlike a pollutionabatement regime, the ATS does not ask the member states to absorb an actual economic loss in the expectation of future gains. If so, that is, if appropriate agreements are issue specific, then does a relatively painless conservation regime mark the upper limit of the eco-regional cooperation that can be expected between nontraditional partners? Although a degree of caution is needed in answering this question, I think that more costly regimes can be managed productively and without defection on a regional basis. The Mediterranean Action Plan is one example of a functional partnership where neither enmity nor the high cost of the enterprise has stopped willing neighbors from taking action, jointly and individually, for the preservation of a regional CPR. The Mediterranean Action Plan brings us back, after a long detour through Antarctica, to the neighborliness of the pre-modern commons. Our neighbors are not necessarily our best friends. We may hold some of them to be among our worst enemies. Nonetheless, it is among neighbors—not between strangers or friends—that decentralized collective action works best.
Notes 1. According to Hardin, the only alternative to enclosure is coercive resource allocation by an external authority: either the free market or an authoritarian state! See G. Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” 1968. 2. Ostrom’s first design principle for a robust CPR calls for both clearly defined boundaries and rights of usage limited to specific individuals or households. The principle seems incompatible with a conception of CPRs where exclusion is, if not altogether impossible, at least difficult and costly. 3. For a succinct analysis and presentation of the Salzburg Initiative, see Susskind (1994, pp. 122–39). 4. The original signatories to the Antarctic Treaty were: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union. 5. The second point is emphasized by David Laws as CRAMRA’s main contribution to the ATS. See “The Antarctic Minerals Regime Negotiations,” in Susskind and Breslin, eds., (1990, pp. 121–49). 6. The war was fought in 1982 by Argentina and the United Kingdom for sovereignty over the Falklands/Malvinas. The U.N. challenge to the legitimacy of the Antarctic regime came in the early 1980s and was led by Malaysia.
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Y CHAPTER THREE
INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL NEGOTIATION A Strategy for the South Adil Najam
his chapter evolves around the premise that North-South environmental negotiations, especially as exemplified at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, are increasingly adversarial and the reigning confrontational attitude amongst negotiators from both sides threatens to hinder, rather than help, the achievement of environmental treaties that are fair, efficient, and stable. The chapter argues that an opportunity exists for the South to formulate a new strategy for international environmental negotiations—built around its own experience and around the principles of negotiation theory—that could better serve the realization of its environmental and developmental goals. This chapter addresses the issue entirely from the perspective of the South. The first section describes the South’s experience in international environmental negotiations since the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment and outlines the perceptions, fears, hopes, and interests that the South brought to and took away from these negotiations. The section concludes that the principal and unchanged interest of the South has been development and a better standard of life for its people. Its principal fear, that the North is using environmental issues as an excuse to pull up the development ladder behind them, has also not been allayed through two decades of environmental diplomacy, nor has its growing frustration at its own failure to make any substantive gains towards its cherished goal of development. The second section speculates that the
T
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New International Economic Order [NIE(co)O] movement of the 1970s is today being converted into a call for a New International Environmental Order [NIE(nv)O], and that the South’s positions, interests, fears, and hopes in this emerging movement remain exactly the same as during its predecessor. The final section proposes a strategy for the South that may make its experience during NIE(nv)O more fruitful than during NIE(co)O. The recommendation is for the South to rethink its negotiation strategy—which till now has been informed only by 500 years of accumulated anger and tries to simultaneously invoke the North’s guilt and its generosity—in light of negotiation theory. The strategy being proposed for the South in this chapter can be most simply described as: “Stop feeling angry at the North and sorry for yourself.” This eight-point strategy recommends that the South should focus on interests, not positions; redefine the power balance; be hard on the issues, not on the people; redefine the international environmental agenda; organize itself; develop its constituency; clean up its own act; and remember that winning is not important, but good agreements are. It is argued that the adoption of such a strategy would not only better serve the true interests of the South, but would lead to a more productive international environmental negotiation regime and thereby would also be better for the North.
The South’s “Bruised Optimism” The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, also known as the Earth Summit), held at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, had been billed by its proponents as “our last chance to save the Earth” (see Thomson, 1992) and was seen by its critics as “a carnival of dunces” (Smith, 1992). A favorite description among journalists and participants alike was to refer to it as a “manyringed circus” ( Johnson, 1992). If it had been a circus, it would have been dubbed the “Greatest Show on Earth.” Not surprisingly, it has instilled strong, but mixed, emotions among those who followed it. While some have wondered whether it was “Noah’s Ark or Jesus’s Cross?” (Banuri, 1992), most have agreed that it “launched the world into a new era of ecodiplomacy, econegotiation and ecolawmaking” (Gardner, 1992). In bringing together more than 100 heads of state and government, 150 nations, 1400 nongovernmental interests (NGIs), 8,000 journalists, and 35,000 participants, UNCED was the largest conference of its kind. In mobilizing the amount of international public interest that it did and in getting more than 150 nations to agree on its products1—specific conventions on climate change and biodiversity, a nonbinding set of principles for sustainable forests, a 27-point
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declaration, a 700-page action program called Agenda 21, and a high-powered United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development—UNCED broke some important new ground.2 However, most analysts of the conference agree that its achievements lagged way behind its potential and were more in the way of articulating well-meaning concerns than spelling enforceable commitments.3 This being said, the reaction from analysts in the South was far more scathing than from those in the North. Leading environmental journals of the South described the Earth Summit as “all show and photo-opportunities [with] little substance” (Third World Resurgence, Aug-Sep, 1992) and branded its assemblage of world leaders as “the class that failed” (Down to Earth, July 15, 1992), while disappointed Southern negotiators lamented that the conference had been “negotiating the size of zero” (TerraViva, June 15, 1992). Martin Khor (1992c) summed the general feeling: It was the greatest show on Earth, but Earth itself lost at the Rio Summit that capped the UNCED process. Southern countries hoping to use the environment as leverage to get some development benefits also lost out. The big winners were the transnational companies: no regulations were put on them and they were treated as “partners.” The governments of the North preserved their global power but their people will also lose in the end if the environment isn’t saved. Perhaps we all lost at Rio.
The South’s Lost Innocence A South (see Box 3.1) that had entered the UNCED negotiation process believing that it was in a unique position of strength (see Kufour, 1991a) left Rio with “a huge sense of anti-climax” (Khor, 1992c). However, disenchantment with UNCED prospects had set in long before delegates reached Rio. At the Geneva preparatory committee meeting (PrepCom), Ambassador Edward Kufour (1991b) of Ghana, speaking for the group-of-77 (G-77), summed the South’s response to the initial drafts of Agenda 21 by proclaiming: “We have not come here to negotiate away our permanent sovereignty over our natural resources.” By the end of the preparatory process the earlier anger had given way to sadness and frustration as Ambassador Jamshed Marker of Pakistan, then chairman of G-77, admitted to nursing a bruised optimism, while the head of the Chilean delegation complained that, “virtually no progress has been made on fundamental issues in two years of negotiations” (SUNS, April 3, 1992). Before the conference, Gordon J. MacDonald (1992) had predicted that “the views of the developing nations will determine the direction, and probably the ultimate significance, of UNCED.” (The New York Times, March 17, 1992) had
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BOX 3.1. DEFINING NORTH-SOUTH Although Charles A. Jones (1983) considers North-South Dialogue to be very much a phrase of the 1970s, neither the terminology nor the concept of the NorthSouth divide is new. By the 1950s the term was in frequent usage within the “development community” (Ward, 1965) and gained wider public recognition in the 1970s during the New International Economic Order (NIEO) movement (see Box 3.5). During NIEO debates, it gained legitimacy through its usage in United Nations documents and international policy fora (UNITAR, 1976). During the 1980s, as the NIEO movement faded from global attention, the term was also confined largely to academic discourse. However, the publication of the South Commission Report (1990) and the term’s wide application by governments, NGIs, the media, and U.N. officials during the UNCED process revitalized it in popular environmental contexts. Despite their pervasive use, the terms North and South are seldom defined. The Brandt Commission4 acknowledged that neither is a “uniform or permanent grouping,” and generally described them as synonymous with rich and poor, developed and developing (Brandt, 1980, 1983). The South Commission5 provides a similar definition and uses the term, South, as an operational definition for the G-77 plus China (South Commission, 1990). In its 1990 report, The Challenge to the South, the South Commission acknowledges that the South itself is not a homogeneous entity and includes nations of widely varying economic strengths, colonial histories, political ideologies, and geographic and
demographic size. However, it stresses that “the primary bond that links the countries and peoples of the South is their desire to escape from poverty and under-development and secure a better life for their citizens.” It echoes the views of the Brandt Report that had pointed out that the South’s “solidarity in global negotiations stems from the awareness of being dependent on the North, and unequal with it.” In The Poverty of Nations (1991), Michael Manley, former prime minister of Jamaica, points out that the western mind is constantly confounded by the fact that over 100 different states representing the full range of the ideological, social, geographic, and economic spectrum find common ground in fora such as G-77 and the Nonaligned Movement (NAM). However, he explains that this is possible because “there is an underlying and binding cement to be found in their common experience of imperialism and colonialism together with the common disadvantage they suffer under the present world economic order.” (For discussion on G-77 and its diversity, see Geldart and Lyon, 1980; Sabri-Abdalla, 1980.) Many Southern environmentalists build on these definitions to stress that the North-South distinction is not just a “developed-developing” difference, but primarily a “domination-dependence” divide; a divide created and perpetuated by five centuries of colonialism which, they say, turned into neocolonialism and is now becoming ecocolonialism. (See Agarwarl and Narain, 1991.) During the UNCED process even Southern government officials began echoing this position.6
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echoed this view and noted that “for the first time . . . the developing countries have an issue where they have some real leverage.” In retrospect, this was not totally incorrect. However, the South soon found that its “leverage” lay not as much in influencing what went into the treaties but in what was kept out of them. Arguably, the treaties signed at Rio, on climate change and biodiversity, were of some consolation to the North; the South, which had come to UNCED proclaiming that “development remains the primary (environmental) objective of developing countries” (Kufour, 1991a), had little to show for the effort.7 Conceivably, it may be argued that the South was unrealistically expecting too much from the conference. However, Indian environmentalist Anil Agarwal (1992) considers the view that “the South came (to Rio) with over-heightened expectations of money and technology” to be a myth and feels that the opposite was true because the South reached Rio with an overarching fear that the Earth Summit “would end up with (the South’s) energy consumption levels being frozen at the current iniquitous levels without the West accepting limits commensurate to its responsibilities for the problem; that biodiversity conservation would become a convenient excuse for free access to this critical resource; and that its sovereignty over its forests would diminish to save the world’s climate.” He further argues that these fears compelled the South to search for “negative gains” (in terms of not losing too much) rather than “positive gains.” This in itself was a recipe for frustration. Stockholm and Rio: Two Different Worlds Like Janus, the Roman god who gave his name to the first month of the Western calendar, every international negotiation is two-headed; one face looking back into the past, the other to the future. In trying to understand how the South’s “bruised optimism” and frustration at UNCED is likely to influence future international environmental negotiations, we must first appreciate how it was informed by the past. The obvious reference point for such a study is the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) held at Stockholm. In at least three important ways the moods of Stockholm and Rio were strikingly similar: both were groundbreaking conferences within the U.N. context; both galvanized tremendous public interest; and both were held at times of great hope about the changing nature of superpower politics (see Box 3.2).8 Although the setting of the world had totally changed in these 20 years, within these differences there were striking similarities for the South. At Rio, the South’s agenda gained prominence because the cold war had ended. At Stockholm, the boycott of the Soviet bloc served the same function. Ironically, the conference boycott by the Soviet Union and its allies—except Romania and Yugoslavia—was itself a manifestation of all-encompassing cold-war politics.10
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BOX 3.2. A TALE OF TWO CITIES Like UNCED, the Stockholm conference had boasted of being the largest United Nations conference ever, up to that point of time. Both were revolutionary in their approach to NGIs. Stockholm’s “Environment Forum” was nowhere as large as the gigantic “Global Forum” at Rio, but was no less effective in “keeping the national delegates honest.” Independent of the official documents, both triggered or coincided with the publication of influential works of environmental scholarship (for example Meadows and others, 1972). Both received unprecedented media attention and generated immense public interest. By coincidence, rather than intent, UNCHE in 1972 and UNCED in 1992 were both conceived in times when major global events were reshaping the prevalent geopolitical and socioeconomic balances of the world. Although a direct comparison with the breaking of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the end of cold-war hostilities will be unfair, the early 1970s cultivated a surprising—in retrospect—sense of optimism about
superpower relations; this despite the Soviet bloc’s boycott of the Stockholm conference. The week before Stockholm, U.S. President Richard Nixon had returned from a “triumphant” summit visit to Moscow, which the world was hailing as a “new beginning.” Even in retrospect, that meeting was more significant than the Washington summit between U.S. President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yelstin in the week immediately following Rio. So pervasive was the mood of superpower reconciliation that the then U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissenger (1979), defined the events of 1972 as the emergence of “a new international order that would reduce lingering enmities, strengthen friendships, and give new hope to emerging nations.” In a diary entry on 9 January 1972, marking his 59th birthday, Richard Nixon (1978) referred to 1971 as “perhaps the most successful from the standpoint of accomplishment to date” and predicted that 1972 “offers immense opportunities and, of course, equally great dangers.”9
While this boycott did not diminish the shadow of the Soviet Union and of cold-war politics on the Stockholm proceedings11—in fact, the war in Vietnam and the issue of nuclear disarmament were amongst the most heatedly discussed issues12—the physical absence of one major superpower bloc did allow the South the opportunity to focus on an agenda of its own rather than being side-tracked by cold-war politics. This was largely precipitated by the emergence of China as the major leader of the conference (see Box 3.3). In short, the events and prevailing atmosphere of superpower relations not only “allowed” the South to articulate its interests and negotiate as a bloc, but also influenced the strategy and the negotiation positions that it adopted. (See United Nations, 1972; Rowland, 1973; Hill, 1972; Pirages, 1978; Caldwell, 1990.) Apart from the fact that scientific understanding of and public concern for environmental systems had improved dramatically in the intervening two decades,
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BOX 3.3. CHINA LEADS THE SOUTH AT STOCKHOLM Participating in its first major United Nations conference since having been allowed to take its U.N. seat in October 1971, the Peoples Republic of China was an unknown commodity in international diplomatic circles. Despite having missed the preparatory process, China emerged as one of the best-prepared delegations and one of the very few which knew exactly what it wanted to achieve at the conference. It surprised all observers first by leading the South in a criticism of both superpowers, and later by stage-managing the reopening and redrafting of the Stockholm declaration. While China had missed the Stockholm preparatory process, it asserted its leadership role very early at the conference itself. On the opening day, as delegates were still registering, and as Canada, Sweden, and the United States were endorsing the draft Stockholm declaration, China made the first of its many stunning announcements by spreading word that it intended to propose major amendments to the draft that had been prepared by the 27-nation preparatory committee.13 Soon, India and Nigeria had joined the Chinese bandwagon. China insisted that it wanted to make a positive contribution to this important document and that the democratic thing
to do was to allow a fair hearing to all 113 nations present. It stated: “The declaration is the main document under discussion at this conference. It sets forth the responsibilities of, and guidelines for, future world action, and only when it embodies the views of a majority of the countries can it have political and moral effect. Otherwise it is empty paper” (New York Times, June 9, 1972, p. A-1). Battle lines were drawn when the U.S. delegate informed the Canadians that it was “quite clear” that the Chinese were “out to wreck the declaration.” As 24 hours of frantic backstage negotiations remained divisive, China—in a risky move—put its support to test by abruptly introducing a resolution in the plenary, calling for a committee of all conference participants to review the draft declaration. The gamble paid off. In a bipolar world, with very strongly defined alliances, held together by bonds of strategic and political dependence, China was uniquely suited to assert leadership of the developing countries. The developing countries rallied behind China because they saw it as a nation big enough and strong enough to assert itself as a truly independent voice, and yet at a stage of development where it could identify with their interests.
the most significant difference between the world of 1972 and that of 1992 was the demise of cold-war politics (Brown, 1992; Mathews, 1991). The world’s geopolitical axis had subtly shifted and East-West tensions were giving way to reemerging North-South ones (Lerner, 1992; Williams, 1993). Consequently, some, like Sebenius (1991) were proposing that as the ideological conflicts recede into the past, more “creative solutions” would become possible. But a world without superpower antagonisms is also a world with very different perspectives on “development assistance” for developing countries (MacDonald, 1991). Coming at a time of a global economic recession, massive debt accumulations, trade
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imbalances, and a net negative flow of resources, this gave three signals to the nations of the South as they prepared for UNCED: • The size of the (aid) pie is getting smaller, not bigger. • There are more claimants (former Soviet bloc nations) to the pie. • In a unipolar world, major donors have rapidly diminishing political/strategic use for their support. With this realization, and without the East-West distractions clouding the agenda, the South found in Rio the opportunity, the inclination, and the forum to rekindle the North-South debate (see Kufour, 1991a; Peng, 1991, 1992; Williams, 1993). It was not unsurprising, then, that the South approached UNCED waving the flag of additionality—fearful of its development aspirations being sacrificed on the altar of new geopolitical realities in the name of the environment. Thus, despite having been proclaimed deceased, cold-war politics left a deep imprint upon UNCED and indirectly informed the South’s strategy at Rio. Stockholm and Rio: The Same South While the distinctions between East and West were becoming redundant at Rio, the South of 1992 was little different from that of 1972. It still found itself trapped in the same quagmire of impoverishment, dependence, and deprivation as it had at Stockholm.14 It still saw poverty, underdevelopment, and unequal global economic relations as the principal causes of its environmental problems and it still mistrusted the North’s environmental agenda as a guise to perpetuate this plight. It was this perception of the causality of its environmental problems that informed the South’s interests and strategy at both conferences. (See South Commission, 1990.) The principal interest of the South at both conferences was the same, and can be described in one word: development. In viewing the conferences as a threat to this cherished (and elusive) goal, the reaction of the South to initial proposals for both conferences bordered on hostility. At one point before Stockholm there was the real fear that the developing countries might decide not to show up for the conference (Kay and Skolnikoff, 1972; Rowland, 1973). The early debates in the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations on UNCED’s terms of reference were equally contentious, with some Southern delegates questioning the very motivation of the conference and raising doubts not different from those raised by their compatriots about UNCHE. Some developing countries had distrusted Stockholm as an attempt to “ratify and even enhance existing unequal economic relations and technical dependence,
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miring them in poverty forever” (Hecht and Cockburn, 1992). Others argued that having created comfortable standards of living for themselves, the industrialized countries wanted to “pull the ladder up behind them” (Rowland, 1973) to “slow planetary industrialization in order to replenish the spoiled ecosphere” (Pirages, 1978). Exemplifying this mind-set was the famous statement from Ivory Coast, which announced that it would prefer more pollution problems [in comparison to poverty problems], “insofar as they are evidence of industrialization” (Rowland, 1978). During the UNCHE preparatory process a number of regional meetings were held to elicit developing countries’ support and input. The most important of these was held at the small village of Founex, Switzerland, in June 1971. The Founex Report prepared by a distinguished group of Southern intellectuals became one of UNCHE’s most important documents outlining the South’s position. Some excerpts (Founex,1972): The developing countries would clearly wish to avoid, as far as feasible, the [environmental] mistakes and distortions that have characterized the patterns of development of the industrialized societies. However, the major environmental problems of the developing countries are essentially of a different kind. They are predominantly problems that reflect the poverty and very lack of development in their societies . . . These are problems, no less than those of industrial pollution, that clamor for attention in the context of the concern with human environment. They are problems which affect the greater mass of mankind . . . In [industrialized] countries, it is appropriate to view development as a cause of environmental problems . . . In [the developing country] context, development becomes essentially a cure for their major environmental problems.
Despite the South’s enunciation of its interests and reiteration of them at the conference itself, it gained nothing more than minor semantic victories in UNCHE documents. In large part Northern governments, NGIs, and media continued to dismiss the South’s development agenda as “pressure tactics” to elicit increased foreign aid (see Rowland 1973; Hill 1972). This experience compounded by that of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) movement that followed, made the South even more skeptical of the North by the time UNCED came about. The reason that Rio’s Earth Summit was not the Second U.N. Conference on the Human Environment, that it had originally been envisaged as, was the unyielding insistence of the developing countries to legitimize the environmentdevelopment linkage that they had fought so hard to establish at Stockholm.15 From China’s 1972 statement, “poverty is the worst form of pollution” (Clarke and Timberlake, 1982) to the publication of the Brundtland Report16 (WCED, 1987),
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the world had come a long way in accepting this linkage, but maybe not long enough (Adede, 1992).17 The South sought legitimacy for its concerns by influencing the United Nations enabling resolution for UNCED. Even though the principal proponents of UNCED were from the North, United Nations resolution 44/228 which sets the mandate for the conference was a creature of Southern interests. Crafted, after heated debate, in ECOSOC committees where developing states constitute the majority and where the majority vote wins, the South was better able to influence its final shape than it was able to affect final UNCED documents that required consensus. Unlike its predecessor—the 1968 U.N. resolution 2398 (XXIII) which convened UNCHE—44/228 was a phenomenally detailed set of responsibilities and goals, even by U.N. standards. Although some, like Johan Holmberg (1992), have opined that the resolution had “set an impossible agenda for the conference,” it remained the South’s way of trying to insure that unlike UNCHE, UNCED would focus on the issues dearest to it (see Box 3.4). Considering what resolution 44/228 had promised to deliver, it is not surprising that the South would have preferred to hold UNCED accountable to this agenda and why it considers UNCED to have failed its mandate. The South’s evaluation of UNCED is inevitably focused on three issues: financial arrangements, institutional arrangements, and technology transfer. The fate of all three demonstrates these commonalties: 1. They lie at the core of resolution 44/228. 2. They were the principal concerns of the South. 3. The overwhelming bulk of time and effort in the UNCED negotiations was spent on these three issues since they were considered critical to the success of the conference. 4. At the end of the UNCED process the “innovative” solutions envisaged by resolution 44/228 had been found for none, and in each case the status quo prevailed. From the Southern perspective, the world after UNCED does not look too different from the world before UNCED, or for that matter the world before UNCHE.18 A Profile in Frustration In summary, the key to understanding the South’s fears and frustrations concerning international environmental negotiation is to appreciate the constancy of the South’s overarching concerns and the equal constancy of its inability to achieve
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BOX 3.4. 44/228—UNCED’s “REAL” AGENDA AND MANDATE The South’s concerns about the development-environment linkage are evident from resolution 44/228’s stress “that poverty and environmental degradation are closely interrelated.” In 1990, resolution 45/211 considered it necessary to reiterate this “fundamental” relationship. Resolution 44/228 also affirmed “that the promotion of economic growth in developing countries is essential to address problems of environmental degradation”; reaffirmed that “states have the sovereign right to exploit their own natural resources”; noted that the industrialized countries were the largest polluters and therefore had the main responsibility of combating pollution; stressed the “specific responsibilities” of transnational corporations; and reaffirmed that “the serious external indebtedness of developing countries and other countries with serious debt-servicing problems has to be addressed.” In short the resolution had already stated much of what the South wanted the Rio documents to say. (Italics in the original) The resolution went on to identify nine areas of “major [environmental] concern” (of which population was not one). It also laid down a set of 23 objectives for UNCED, which, apart from others, included: to identify strategies “for concerted action to deal with major environmental issues in the socioeconomic development processes”; to recommend measures “to protect and enhance the environment, taking into account the specific needs of developing countries”; to promote “development of international environmental law . . . taking into account the special needs and concerns of the developing countries”; to accord “high priority to drought and desertification control”; to examine “the relationship between environmental
degradation and the international economic environment”; to examine strategies “for defined activities to promote a supportive international economic climate conducive to sustained and environmentally sound development in all countries, with a view to combating poverty and improving the quality of life, and bearing in mind that the incorporation of environmental concerns and considerations in development planning and policies should not be used to introduce new forms of conditionality in aid or in development financing and should not serve as a pretext for creating unjustified barriers to trade”; to identify “ways and means of providing new and additional financial resources particularly to developing countries for environmentally sound programs and projects in accordance with national development objectives . . . [and for] measures directed towards solving major environmental problems”; to consider various mechanisms for “ensuring, on a favorable basis, the most effective and expeditious transfer of environmentally sound technologies to developing countries”; to examine “the role of the United Nations system in dealing with the environment and possible ways of improving it”; to qualify the financial requirements for the successful implementation of Conference decisions and recommendations; and to identify possible sources, including innovative ones, of additional resources. In short, resolution 44/228 laid out for UNCED an agenda and a mandate that the developing countries, justifiably, considered a victory for their position on issues of environment and development. In retrospect, it was an agenda and a mandate that UNCED proved incapable of fulfilling.
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any of its goals. What galvanized the North-South polarization at both conferences was the totally different perceptions that industrialized and developing nations hold about what the “real” environmental issues exactly are (see Hill, 1972).19 Fueling the South’s frustration is the fact that at both conferences, the South’s arguments for defining additional financial resources as their right and as compensation from the North for having despoiled the planet’s environment, was seen by the North as a distraction, as extortion, and as exploitation of the issues to “pry more foreign aid money out of the rich” (Rowland, 1973; see also Hill 1972; Pirages 1978; Caldwell 1990; Sebenius 1991; Dumanoski 1992; Simons 1992). The single most striking conclusion of comparing the tone and content of North-South environmental negotiations is that in two decades during which the world map has been redrawn, nothing—either in argument or in the predicament of the South—has changed (Brundtland, 1992). Maurice Strong, who was the secretary general for both conferences pointed out at his last press conference at Rio: “Whilst this conference has been successful as a meeting, not a single thing has changed regarding our civilized behavior. We didn’t succeed 20 years ago at the Stockholm conference and we don’t have another 20 to waste” (quoted in Khor, 1992b). The “development and environment” section of the summarized general debate in the official UNCHE Report (United Nations, 1972) can today be read verbatim as a surrogate summary of the development and environment discussions at UNCED. Some excerpts: Considerable emphasis was placed by speakers from developing countries upon the fact that for two-thirds of the world’s population the human environment was dominated by poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy and misery . . . The priority of developing countries was development. Until the gap between the poor and the rich countries was substantially narrowed, little if any progress could be made . . . support for environmental action must not be an excuse for reducing development . . . there must be a substantial increase in development assistance. . . . Many speakers from developing countries stated that there was exploitation of their natural resources by developed countries for their own purposes; some protested against the activities of multinational corporations . . . the only criterion of the success of environmental programmes was the substantial improvement of the conditions of life of the vast majority of mankind. To achieve this there must be an entirely new attitude on the part of the developed countries towards their responsibilities . . . it would be intolerable if the nations which had created the world’s environmental problems should expect others to meet the cost.
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From NIEO to NIEO The 1972 Stockholm conference is often treated as no more than a footnote in much of the literature dealing with the history of the North-South debate. This is largely because soon after the Stockholm conference the world was brought to a near standstill by the 1973 oil crisis, which has been seen as the official launching point for the New International Economic Order [popularly called NIEO, for the purpose of this chapter we shall refer to it as NIE(co)O]. However, it needs to be appreciated that NIE(co)O had been slowly brewing within the documents of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM), the Group-of-77 (G-77), and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) for nearly a decade before it caught international attention. Krasner (1985) sees the movement as the culmination of efforts that had begun even earlier in the 1940s. While the oil crisis was the event that bought it to the forefront of global attention, UNCHE was probably the first major international forum in which the South negotiated as a bloc and presented the arguments that were soon to become the hallmark of NIE(co)O.20 (See Jones, 1983; Murphy, 1984.) Neither the current North-South antagonisms in international environmental negotiations, nor the relevance of Stockholm can be understood without understanding the NIE(co)O movement (see Box 3.5). The essential motivation for NIE(co)O was the South’s desire to transform the world economic system as characterized by institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).21 At UNCED, the issue that concerned the South the most was no different.22 Yet, there has been a hesitancy on the part of environmentalists, especially in the North, to view North-South environmental dialogue as an extension of the NIE(co)O debate. In part, this is because of the fear—as articulated by Sebenius (1991)—that entertaining the South’s development agenda might protract ugly North-South rifts and increase the polarizations. This fear ignores the view that side-stepping what the South believe to be its just and legitimate concerns has created and prolonged these polarizations in the first place, and threatens to imperil the very future of international environmental negotiations. At the same time, this hesitancy has been propped up by the hope that a collective threat to the global environment may spur collective action (Mathews, 1991), or that a new ideological commonalty may grow around the concept of sustainable development (Sebenius, 1991), or that the demise of East-West tensions might themselves ease North-South misapprehensions (MacDonald, 1991). UNCED and its results have now shown that these hopes have been largely, though not totally, misplaced.
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BOX 3.5. THE NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER In The North-South Dialogue: A Brief History, Jones (1983) explains the emergence and rationale of the NIE(co)O movement for both the North and the South: “Arab oilpower and American humiliation in SouthEast Asia combined to direct the attention of western politicians, journalists, and publics increasingly towards the interminable succession of technically complex international negotiations on trade, money, and a host of lesser issues, in which it appeared that a new balance of power was to be struck between the industrialized West and the successor states of the old European empires in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Satisfactory outcomes in these negotiations were regarded by the thirdworld states as essential to healthy economic and political development because it was widely assumed that the prevailing structure of international institutions served the narrow interests of powerful industrialized states at the expense of the poorer countries of the South.” Hansen (1979) defines the NIE(co)O debate as a conflict about conceptions about the management of society. On a similar note, Krasner (1985) sees it as the South’s fundamental challenge to the existing order of what he calls global liberalism and points out that vulnerability, not simple poverty was the motivating force for the newly independent developing countries. In popular understanding, however, it is generally agreed that for the South NIE(co)O was a movement aimed at restructuring the iniquitous global economic relations; and for the North it became an effort to bring into the folds of the global free market the two thirds of humanity that lived in the so called third world.
The oil crisis of 1973, new strategic South-South alliances that emerged therein (especially those motivated by OPEC’s [Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] desire to exert its leadership role), and a growing resentment in the South against an unjust world economic system, precipitated what has been called “one of the most important modern global conflicts” (Murphy, 1984). Rallying its new found unity, the South gained a major victory in the special session of the United Nations in June 1974 which legitimized its call for the creation of a New International Economic Order by passing the resolution and a Plan of Action. U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim reiterated the South’s views by proclaiming that “many new nations, having won political independence, find themselves still bound by economic dependency. For a long time it was thought that the solution to this problem was aid and assistance. It is increasingly clear, however, that a New International Economic Order is essential if the relations between the rich and poor nations are to be transformed into a mutually beneficial partnership.” The U.N. followed its call for establishing the NIE(co)O with the adoption, in December 1974, of a “Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States.” In essence, the new order demanded for the developing countries “full and complete economic emancipation” and the way to achieve it, they agreed (at a Conference of Developing Countries in Dakar in early 1975), was “to recover and control their natural resources and wealth, and the means of economic development.” The South decided to “change their traditional approach to
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negotiations with developed countries, hitherto consisting in presentation of a list of requests to developed countries and an appeal to their political goodwill.” The new approach to negotiations would involve common action to strengthen their bargaining position, more economic activity among themselves and a strategy based on “the principle of relying first and foremost on themselves” (Menon, 1977). In its earliest days, the movement lived up to its hopes. Even the U.S. ambassador to the seventh special session of the U.N. General Assembly left saying that “perhaps never in the history of the United Nations has there been so intensive and so genuine a negotiation among so many nations on so profoundly important a range of issues. We have shown that we can negotiate in good faith and, in doing so, reach genuine accord” (quoted in Menon,1977). Soon, however, the conflict escalated with the North accusing the South of adopting a confrontational approach and the South blaming the North for perpetuating its misery. Environment was one of the many strategic issues in the debate. NAM was attacking the North for exporting its environmental problems to the South by stressing that “environmental measures
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adopted by one state should not adversely affect the environment of the states, or zones outside their jurisdiction”; the same NAM conference reaffirmed that “any infringement of the rights of effective control by any state over its national resources and their exploitation by means suited to its own situation, having respect for the ecological balance, is contrary to the aims and principles of the United Nations Charter and hampers the development of international cooperation” (quoted in Murphy, 1984). As geopolitical events in the 1980s shaped new alliances, the South’s unity as a bloc weakened, the control of the Bretton Woods twins over an increasingly indebted South became even stronger, and the North’s perception of the economic importance of natural resources in the South (particularly mineral and agricultural products) diminished, the NIE(co)O agenda began slowly receding from world attention, only to re-emerge in importance as the 1990s eroded the East-West polarizations and as environmental negotiations emerged as a new rich ground for this dialogue.
Understanding the South’s Frustration To understand how the South will respond to international environmental treaty making we must understand the South’s underlying interests. As Porter and Brown (1991) point out: “The tone and substance of North-South bargaining on environmental issues are influenced by the structure of the global economic system, which exerts indirect pressure on the policies of developing countries toward their natural resources and thus constrains the quest for global cooperation to save those resources. The developing states’ perceptions of the global economic structure as inequitable have long been a factor in their policy responses to global environmental issues. Those perceptions are based on the reality of the industrialized countries’ dominance of world trade and financial
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systems and the continued evolution of those systems to the disadvantage of developing countries.” Illustrative of the view that the South’s negotiating strategy at Rio was no more successful than its negotiating strategy during NIE(co)O is this evaluation from India’s leading environmental news magazine (Down to Earth, July 15, 1992): “For the South, as a whole, UNCED showed up the failure of its own strategy. These countries had gone with the intention of seeking reparation from their rich counterparts for the damages caused to the world’s environment. But they came back with nothing and looking less moral to boot. The North simply dismissed them as a penurious bunch, pulling at its purse strings.” Illustrative of the fact that for the South the current environmental negotiations lie on the same continuum as the economic negotiations of the 1970s is Julius K. Nyerere’s 1974 definition of the NIE(co)O (as quoted in Murphy, 1984). By only changing the word economic to environmental, this could be read as a definition of the South’s position today: “The complaint of the poor nations against the present state is not only that we are both poor in absolute and relative term and in comparison with the rich nations. It is also that within the existing structure of economic [/environmental] interaction we must remain poor, and get relatively poorer, whatever we do. . . . The demand for a new International Economic [/Environmental] Order is a way of saying that the poor nations must be enabled to develop themselves according to their own interests, and to benefit from the efforts they make.” It is this perspective, further informed by a long history and lingering memories of colonial exploitation that has shaped the South’s response to the international environmental negotiation regime (see Peng, 1992; George, 1988; Bello, 1989). Box 3.6 briefly summarizes this feeling of accumulated frustration. It is important, then, to understand that the South’s NIE(co)O agenda is not going to disappear either by ignoring it or by wishing it away (Thomas, 1992; Williams, 1993). The resilience of the South in pursuing this agenda over the last two decades demonstrates that all North-South negotiations, and particularly environmental negotiations, will be dogged by this agenda. What is more important and promising is the opportunity to transform the New International Economic Order [NIE(co)O] into a movement for a New International Environmental Order [NIE(nv)O].23 The magnitude and attendance at the Global Forum at Rio was an undeniable sign of the emergence of such a movement. The growing environmental awareness and NGI activism, both in the North and the South, promise to be its fuel. This is important, because unlike NIE(co)O which was primarily a movement of the South, NIE(nv)O can be a movement of both the South and
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BOX 3.6. THE ANGRY SOUTH: CAUGHT IN THE PAST? By its very definition all North-South dialogue is firmly rooted in five centuries of colonial experience (see Box 3.1). It is tempting, then, to dismiss the South’s persistent distrust and resulting militancy towards the North as the paranoia of historical baggage. However, a closer analysis of the South’s charges of ecocolonialism and green imperialism shows that its frustration, even if originating in the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama; has been exacerbated by events in the much more recent past. The anger is directed, not at subjugation in the past, but at what is seen as subjugation today. The frustration emerges not from what had transpired in the past, but the South’s inability to influence what might happen in the future. (See Agarwal and Narain, 1992; Bakshi, 1992; Bello, 1989; Banuri, 1992). The report of the South Commission (1990), articulates this view: “All the world is linked together, inextricably. But it is linked in an asymmetrical and skewed manner . . . the countries of the South are
politically, economically, and culturally subordinate to the much stronger and better-organized North . . . the relationship is one of dependence much more than interdependence . . . Having for most part won the struggle for political independence, the countries of the South have been increasingly hampered by its limitations; it has not given them the power to determine their own policies and their own future . . . the conviction has therefore steadily grown in the South that there is a need to continue the struggle for independence, political and economic . . . the South seeks an undivided world in which there would be no South and no North; in which there would not be one part developed, rich, and dominating, and the other underdeveloped, poor, dominated . . . development is a process which frees people from the fear of want and exploitation. It is a movement away from political, economic, or social oppression. Through development, political independence acquires its true significance.”
the North.24 It is promising, because unlike NIE(co)O where the South insisted on North-South dialogue at the irritation of the North, this time the dialogue is being called for by the North. In addressing the Earth Summit, Jacques Delors, President of the European Commission, proclaimed that the “rebirth of North-South dialogue is absolutely urgent” (TerraViva, June 15, 1992). Johan Holmberg (1992) of the International Institute of Environment and Development reaches the same conclusion, as does Martin Khor Peng (1992) of the Third World Network. During the dying moments of NIE(co)O, Mahbub-ul-Haq (1980) predicted that “only a real international economic or political crisis will convince all sides to rush [back] to the negotiating table [to] revive the North-South dialogue.” The environmental problems of today are that crisis. In the revival of this dialogue
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there exists the danger that like NIE(co)O before it, NIE(nv)O would also be wrought with conflicts of interest; not just amongst the governments but also amongst the NGIs. But a greater opportunity exists because unlike most other international conflicts, global environmental issues are by definition a nonzero-sum game; an environmental gain for either side is, by definition, an environmental gain for everybody. The challenge, for both the North and the South, is to ensure that the win-win solutions are found and that the fate of NIE(nv)O is different from the frustrated stalemate of NIE(co)O.
Stop Feeling Angry at the North and Sorry for Yourself! Previous sections have tried to establish that, (i) twenty years of international environmental negotiations have left the South increasingly frustrated by its inability to achieve what it considers to be its just and legitimate environmental interests, and (ii) there exists today a window of opportunity for the South to achieve through the emerging New International Environmental Order what it failed to achieve through the perhaps discredited New International Economic Order. This section proposes a strategy that might allow the South to avail itself of this opportunity. In doing so the premise is that the negotiation strategy adopted by the South till now has been flawed because it has failed to produce its desired results and that its essential flaw derives from the perception it has bred in the North that it is confrontational, adversarial, militant, and anti-North (as opposed to pro-South). Some in the South might argue that the confrontational path that North-South dialogue has often taken is as much a function of the South’s false hopes (of what they might achieve) as of the North’s false fears (of what they might lose); others would contend that the South’s anger has neither been unjustified nor unprovoked. While a detailed discussion of whether these perceptions are justified is not the subject of this chapter, the thesis of such arguments is the adage that it takes two to make a fight. Yet, the flip-side of the same adage is that it takes only one to stop the fight. If the achievement of goals is more important that the mere retaliatory value of confrontation (the getting even mentality), as this chapter assumes it is, then it is to the South’s interest to be the side which realizes that since no one is winning it is best to stop the fight. (See Box 3.7.) The need for such a strategy emerges from the realization that the product of any negotiation is not the agreement but its implementation, which in turn is nearly always a function not just of the agreement but of the process by which it is reached (Susskind and Cruikshank, 1987; Saunders, 1991). A good process is one that
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• Is perceived by the parties as being fair, efficient, wise and stable (Susskind and Cruikshank, 1987). • Allows for efficient “packaging” (Raiffa, 1982). • Can build a relationship between the parties (Fisher and Brown, 1988). • Fosters a problem-solving attitude (Pruitt and Rubin, 1986). • Leads to mutual gain solutions (Fisher, Ury, and Patton, 1991). As the South has found, through bitter experience, a good process is not a derivative of how strongly you believe in your positions or how legitimate your interests are, but of how effective a strategy you can adopt. In an insightful analysis of why the North-South negotiations during NIE(co)O failed, Mahbub-ul-Haq (1980) stressed that this dialogue had “deteriorated to a ritual and a skillful exercise in non-dialogue.” The same could well be said about the North-South aspect of the UNCED negotiations. The reasons he gave are equally true today. In understanding, and sympathizing, with the South’s concerns and frustrations, the advice this chapter offers to the South is to: “Stop feeling angry at the North and sorry for yourself.” The eight-point strategy proposed here evolves
BOX 3.7. A FEW WORDS ON CONFRONTATION It is not being suggested that all confrontation is necessarily bad. It is better, for example, to confront a problem than to ignore it. Like conflict, confrontation too, is natural and sometimes even healthy. What is not natural and certainly not healthy is confrontation for confrontation’s sake, or for the sake of getting even. Getting To YES (Fisher and others, second edition, 1991) defines negotiation jujitsu as the art of putting the other side’s strengths to your own advantage. Confrontation for confrontation’s sake can become what might be called reverse negotiation jujitsu where a party puts its own strengths against itself. As the former secretary general of the British Commonwealth, Shridath Ramphal (1980) points out, all North-South dialogue is “bound to be disputatious”; the real question is whether that dialogue is productive of agreement and so contributes to
a more harmonious world, or is it to be so mired in discord as to enlarge global instability. Also, the opposite of confrontation is not weakness. There are times to confront and there are times to negotiate; discerning between the two is what strategy is all about. For example, the former President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere (1980) in addressing the G-77 on the NIE(co)O, stated: “We [the South] have become very apologetic to our own people and to others. When participating in a dialogue we become apologetic, as if to negotiate is somehow to surrender or to soften about the objective. And if dialogue gets us nowhere, we become apologetic about confrontation, as if we were being unreasonable—even irrational—and provoking an all-out war which we cannot win. I do not believe that is the kind of choice we face.”
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from the principal lessons learned from negotiation theory.25 Yet, it is rooted entirely in the experience of the South in 20 years of international environmental negotiations, and is particularly informed by the NI(co)O experience. In the parlance of negotiation literature this strategy may be described as being unconditionally constructive (see Fisher and Brown, 1988) or as principled nonconfrontation (see Fisher, Ury and Patton, 1991). Yet, it needs to be stressed that this is not a soft strategy. In many cases it is likely to lead to actions far more stringent than those being adopted now. The fundamental difference in this strategy is that it seeks to redefine North-South environmental negotiations as a non-zero-sum game, in which gains for one party are measured not in terms of losses for the other, but in terms of the tangible gains for oneself. If success is measured not by how much one side gives to the other either in terms of financial assistance or control over resources, but how much is gained by humanity, both present and future generations win in terms of quality of life. #1 Focus on Interests, not Positions Development remains the primary objective of developing countries . . . We shall pursue sustainable development. This we shall do to the best of our ability without any prompting from anyone, because we believe it is in our interest to do so. AMBASSADOR EDWARD KUFOUR OF GHANA
(1991B), AS CHAIRMAN OF G-77
In any negotiation, most parties come to the negotiating table with “positions,” yet it is a set if “interests” that bring them to the table. Fisher and others (1991) define the distinction as positions being “something you have decided upon” and interests as “what caused you to so decide.” As parties entrench themselves into win-lose positions the seeds of escalation are sowed (Pruitt and Rubin, 1986). It is always important, and sometimes difficult, to focus on one’s own as well as the other party’s interests. In the heat of positional bargaining, it is all too easy to get carried away with the emotional rhetoric that often surrounds positions— your own as well as those of the others. Negotiators who fully understand and retain grasp of their own interests are less likely to leave the table with “hollow victories” like those that the South scored at Rio; and those who are able to appreciate and respond to the interests of the other party are most likely to stimulate creative, mutually advantageous solutions. As argued earlier, the South’s interests in environmental negotiations have remained unchanged: to seek development and a better life for its people. Its positions, however, have varied anywhere from demanding the proverbial pound of flesh for the North’s historical sins to seeking “charity” in the name of development assistance. The first forces the North to entrench deeper into retaliatory confrontation while the second puts the South into a position of
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subservience. The proposed strategy recommends that rather than trying to invoke the North’s guilt or generosity, the South’s own self-interest will be best served by invoking the North’s self-interest.26 Such a strategy is better facilitated today than in the 1970s because of the North’s desire to be at the negotiating table with the South, and the opportunity this offers to trade across issues that the sides value differently (see Raiffa 1982; Susskind and Cruikshank 1987). The argument that poverty itself is the worst polluter has the moral as well as intellectual potential to make poverty eradication— which is the development interest of the South—to become an “environmental interest” for the North. However, framing such an argument will require a major intellectual initiative, which must come from the South. If the change is to be lasting, the South will have to make its case for structural change rather than be bought by a few more crumbs in its beggar’s bowl. The advice given by Mahbub-ul-Haq (1980) to NIE(co)O leaders is equally valid for NIE(nv)O initiators: “The developing countries, in their initial excitement of the battle, have sometimes confused short-term concessions for structural changes . . . It has not been clear at times whether their demand is for a little more foreign assistance, a few more trade preferences, or a quick dose of debt relief, or whether it is for the elimination of those biases within the international market system which prevent full and self-reliant development of their national economies. A clarification of objectives at both ends is vital for serious negotiations.” Whenever it can, the South must not only make its own interest explicit, but also insist on making the interests of the North explicit. For example, if a NorthSouth financial transfer is being made to defer the cost to the South of signing a treaty in which the North is interested, then it is to the benefit of both sides to frame the transaction as a mutually advantageous environmental deal (which it is) rather than as an act of the North’s benevolence (which it is not, since the North is getting a service in terms of global environmental protection). This will save the South from a sense of false indebtedness and ensure the North of better compliance because the South can be held to its part of the bargain. Such an arrangement is likely to give negotiators and implementers on both sides a clearer and less ambiguous understanding of why the bargain has been struck and what is expected of each party. The lesson to be remembered is that the “requirement for effective conflict settlement is neither cooperation nor competition, but . . . ‘enlightened self-interest’ ” (Rubin, 1991). #2 Redefine the Power Balance The South has only one option in this entire North-South debate. It has never had much economic or political power. It can only have moral power. ANIL AGARWAL
(1992), INDIAN ENVIRONMENTALIST
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A skewed balance of economic, political, and technological power is the principal driving force of the North-South confrontation. As Krasner (1985) points out, the North-South debate is not just about wealth, it is about power. More specifically, it is about the South’s perception of powerlessness. However, it is suggested here that the South is not, in fact, powerless. But the onus of redefining the existing power dynamics lies with the South.27 The purpose of this recommendation is not to suggest that this power imbalance is in any way irrelevant, unimportant, or unreal; far from it, the South’s disadvantage, as exemplified by the poverty and deprivation of its peoples, is very real. The dilemma, however, is that the more powerless it feels, the less able it is to affect the power status quo. North-South environmental negotiations are, therefore, a perfect example of what Lord McCarthy (1991) calls a game “more akin to poker than to chess.” Many in the South have echoed the McCarthian argument that negotiation in these settings “is seen not just as a matter of logic and argument” but as a function of “the way the cards are dealt.” It is in accepting the validity of this argument that the case is built for applying what Fisher and others (1991) call “negotiation jujitsu.” Apologists in the South have based their pleas for charity on the desperate powerlessness of the South; the militants, on the other hand, have over-estimated the efficacy of the South’s power to disrupt. Both cases represent a serious miscalculation of the power that the South does, and can, enjoy. Both Stockholm and Rio demonstrated that the South does have power. It has the power of moral persuasion in that it has indeed been a victim of the global environmental crisis;28 it also has the power of numbers, especially in U.N. institutions. The South has used its power to its advantage at both conferences in ensuring that the issues and options that it least liked were kept out of the final texts. However, it has failed to bring the concerns and solutions that it does support into the texts of the agreements. In this, its power may be seen as a negative power; the power to stop, rather than the power to shape. Indeed, this has been largely, but certainly not entirely, because of the North’s much greater economic and political power. However, the South has only itself to blame for not having “developed”—and deployed—its negotiating power further. In believing that all power is fungible and economic or military strength is entirely transformable to negotiating power the South has trapped itself into the downward spiral of perceived powerlessness, where the assumption of powerlessness breeds the reality.29 What it has failed to recognize, and thereby to develop, is the power of its of it own legitimacy (see #4 below), the power of its own preparation (see # 5 below), and the power of its own credibility (see #6 below).
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Most importantly, it has never tried to cultivate its best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA).30 As the quote from Julius Nyerere in Box 3.7 implies, every negotiation has to be seen in light of the larger goal. In environmental negotiations, in which the North and South are bound to be differentially interested in different aspects of the agreement, or agreements on different issues, the potential for trading between issues is full of innovative possibilities. At UNCED, for example, it was the South and not the North that enjoyed the better BATNA. Arguably, the South could have walked away from the conference at any time and still held the moral high ground. The North never had that luxury. Yet, the South came back with frameworks on issues of greater interest to the North (climate change, biodiversity, and forests) which gave it nothing of what it was seeking, and without even statements of principles on the issues of its concern, for example, desertification, poverty, water, and so on. #3 Be Hard on Issues, Not on People A decision by the South to reject subordination, and to act on that repudiation, does not imply a desire for confrontation. The confrontation already inherent in the current domination by the North must be replaced by a more balanced and equitable management of global affairs which satisfies the interests of developed and developing countries alike and recognizes the interdependence of the world’s people. SOUTH COMMISSION
(1990)
As pointed out earlier, nothing has influenced and shaped the South’s frustration more than five centuries of shared colonial exploitation. While this might otherwise have been an unfair reaction on the South’s part, it needs to be appreciated that the anger derives not just from the past but from the present. The past is invoked primarily because the South sees the current global systems of economics, trade, and governance as an extension of the same colonial legacy and as no less exploitative. Not being able to influence change in these systems can sometimes lead to the futile, but not surprising, resort of venting anger and frustration at people rather than at issues. Within the vocabulary of the more militant Southern voices one sees frustration being translated into an attack on those who are seen as offenders, rather than on the offense. It is not surprising, then, that the dialogue soon converts into a lock-in with each side entrenching itself deeper into what is seen as a defense of its identity. When the focus moves from a dialogue on principles to an exchange of accusations, objectivity is often the first casualty and stalemate converts to escalation (see Pruitt and Rubin, 1986). For example, with U.S. President
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George Bush arriving at UNCED saying that “the American lifestyle is not open to negotiation,” and the Indian Minister for the environment, Kamal Nath, responding that “our position is that USA is the biggest culprit in the world,” there was little hope left for even thinking about mutual gain solutions and meaningful dialogue (quotes from Down to Earth, July 15, 1992). What is sacrificed here is not just civility, but relationship—and the latter is a critical component of a good negotiating process (see Fisher and Brown, 1988; Zartman and Berman, 1982; Sebenius, 1984). Even more importantly, the focus shifts from issues to personalities. In a world where everyone—particularly the press—loves a bad fight, the reason for the fight soon becomes irrelevant. As issues are relegated to a peripheral seat, potential allies are lost; potential points, never scored. In attacking the offender, rather than the principle behind the perceived offense, the possibility for any solution, let alone mutual gains, is soon foreclosed. While such a strategy may make some feel like Jack standing up to the giant, there is little, if any, substantive gain to be made. It is easy to forget that the fight is not against the Bretton Woods twins, but for accountability, transparency, and democracy in international institutions; not against U.S. lifestyles, but for more conserving patterns of consumption; not against the wealth of the North but for poverty eradication in the South. It is ironic in surveying the results from Rio that while the South was extremely hard on the people (that is, President George Bush, the United States of America, World Bank, GAAT, and so on) it was surprisingly soft on the issues, and in the end agreed to the perpetuation of all the principles it was supposedly crusading against. #4 Redefine the Agenda The ecological debt must be paid . . . Hunger should be done away with . . . Let this be the end of selfishness and hegemonism; the end of callousness, irresponsibility and deceit. Tomorrow it will be too late to do what should have been done a long time ago. FIDEL CASTRO, PRESIDENT OF CUBA SPEAKING AT
UNCED31
Along with recommendations #5 and #7 below, this recommendation lies at the heart of this strategy and could well become the difference between success and failure for the South in the emerging NIE(nv)O. A major criticism from the South has been that the international environmental agenda is principally driven by Northern concerns. For example, it is argued that even though global warming and ozone depletion may end up affecting the South disproportionately they
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are (i) of the North’s making, and (ii) more important for the North since the South has more pressing survival issues to deal with; similarly, the issues of biodiversity and forests, as they are currently defined, are also of much greater interest to the North than the South (Agarwal, 1992). These criticisms are not unjustified. However, the hope that the North might, of its own accord, devise an agenda that reflects the South’s interests rather than its own, is unjustified and demonstrates an unfortunate naiveté about the world we live in. The onus of redefinition, it must be realized, lies with the South. While environmental activists in the South have begun demanding a redefinition of the international environmental agenda, government negotiators have found themselves increasingly constrained by the agenda already on the table. Anil Agarwal (1992) poignantly asks: “Which questions should [the world] try to solve first[?] Why ozone layer depletion or climate change or biodiversity conservation? Why not the international financial system, terms of trade or poverty, all of which have deep ecological linkages with the environmental problems of the South?” Arguably, the South has an appealing case. If the world needs a global climate change treaty to avert the uncertain likelihood of an unknown number of possible deaths and an equally unknown amount of possible agricultural loss over an unknown period of time, then does it not stand to objective reason that the world needs treaties on safe drinking water and soil-loss much more. Would these prevent any more deaths or greater agricultural loss each year than the worst-case scenario of global warming might do in 50? Yet, to demand such an agenda the South has to invest effort and intellectual resources in defining it, defending it, and propagating it. It is up to the South to take the lead in defining this new agenda and linking it to the concerns of the North so that they do not feel left out as the South feels left out of the current one. The creative linkages advocated in much of negotiation theory (see especially Raiffa, 1982; Sebenius, 1984) and stressed in recommendations by the Salzburg Initiative (Salzburg, 1992) and other proposals for reforming the international environmental negotiation system (see Benedick, 1991; Eckaus, 1992; Mathews, 1991; Porter and Brown, 1991; Skolnikoff, 1990; Susskind, 1992) can be fruitfully served by such a redefined agenda that seeks to include the interests of both the South and the North.32 The South’s redefined agenda must also resist the temptation from the North to Balkanize environmental treaty making by focusing on smaller and smaller issues in hope of quicker results. Such a view—as well as the approach of the ozone depletion negotiations, in which the nations of the North essentially decided the treaty among themselves and then haggled over financial resources with the South later—should be resisted. Instead, the South must emphasize focusing on the
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holistic approach so that trading between issues (and treaties) that the parties value differently can be facilitated.33 #5 Organize Yourself For the South, in the era of negotiations, effective unity is the mandate of the world’s poor. But without organization real unity will be forever a mirage. SIR SHRIDATH RAMPHAL
(1980), GUYANA, FORMER SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH
The centrality of good organization in effective negotiation is a major thrust of the Salzburg Initiative on reforming the international environmental negotiation system (Salzburg, 1992). Southern scholars have also been calling for a better-organized South (Mahbub-ul-Haq, 1976, 1980; Ramphal, 1980; Nyerere, 1980; South Commission, 1990; Manley, 1991). The lesson from negotiation theory is also the same (Fisher and others, 1991; Susskind and Cruikshank, 1987; Susskind, 1992). Though somewhat belatedly, environmentalists in the South are coming to similar conclusions (Agarwal, 1992; Peng, 1992; Khor, 1992b, 1992c). An important insight into the importance of organization in negotiations comes from Sir Shridath Ramphal who has remained an important leader of the South both in NIE(co)O and the emerging NIE(nv)O. In his essay, “Unity Alone is not Strength” (1980) he writes: “The trouble is that an instinct for unity without organization has persisted into an era of negotiations when organization itself has become the concomitant of unity and the precondition for unified action. The organization of the South for effective negotiation with the North can never be free of difficulty; the question now is, however, whether effective negotiation with the North or even practical cooperation within the South is possible without such organization. All evidence suggests that it is not.” Environmental negotiations, although essentially political in nature, are often shrouded in scientific and technical complexities for which the nations of the South are not always prepared (Susskind, 1992; Caldwell, 1990). The time and expense required in protracted international negotiations is another limiting factor. All this is often compounded by the fact that those who negotiate treaties are usually professional diplomats rather than those directly concerned with environmental implementation (Khor, 1992c). Individual nations in the South need to cultivate the human resources required for complex environmental negotiations. More importantly, the South as a whole requires a coordinated strategy, which allows the scarce resources of time, money, and human capital to be pooled for maximum effectiveness.
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A proposal that has floated around for nearly a decade and was formally outlined in the report of the South Commission (1990) recommends the setting up of a “South Secretariat.” The commission argues: “The South is not well organized at the global level and has [therefore] not been effective in mobilizing its shared expertise and experience or its bargaining power. As a consequence, it is at a great disadvantage in its relations with the North. This is also prejudicial to the process of South-South cooperation.” The report finds that in the absence of such organization individual developing countries have not been able to sustain solidarity in the face of the temptation to seek separate deals, and that the South as a whole has failed to respond to the needs of complex collective negotiation. It goes on to suggest that the establishment of a South Secretariat would facilitate “well-organized collective action [to] benefit all countries, with little, if any, significant sacrifice of national advantage . . . [will] establish common priorities . . . share technical and negotiating expertise . . . [encourage] constructive South-South cooperation . . . develop a shared professional service to support [the South] on matters under negotiation . . . and update [the] negotiating agenda.” To this exhaustive list, two related priorities suggested by the Salzburg Initiative (see Susskind, 1992) and advocated by MIT’s Lawrence Susskind (1992) need to be added. The first is the importance of prenegotiation that was so amply highlighted during the UNCED process. The second is the need for the South to come to all environmental negotiations with at least one draft treaty. This would not only reinforce the previous four recommendations of this strategy but would give the South a headstart on the negotiation process, and a much better chance of influencing the final draft. Given that there may be a multitude of subinterests within the South (see #6 below), multiple drafts from the South may sometimes be required. The importance of such drafts is exemplified by the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (unfortunately acronymed Rio DEAD). After protracted debate during the fourth UNCED PrepCom at New York, and with only two days to go, no consensus was emerging.34 At this point the plenary Chairman, Ambassador Tommy Koh of Singapore, announced that he would draft a new version as a last effort. Thanks to some powerful back-stage negotiations and Koh’s leadership, following even more heated debate, this version was adopted very late into the last night. Without taking any credit away from the mediation skills of Tommy Koh it needs to be appreciated that he succeeded in coming up with a draft that “no one was happy with but every one was able to live with” because he was able to work with two draft declarations that had earlier been proposed by the United
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States and the G-77. Without those, it is doubtful if even he could have been able to craft the acceptable, though not uncontroversial, Rio Declaration.35 #6 Develop Your Constituency [The G-77 is] the trade union of the poor. JULIUS K. NYERERE
(1980), CHAIRMAN OF THE SOUTH COMMISSION AND FORMER PRESIDENT OF TANZANIA
As elaborated earlier, the South is, in fact, not a homogeneous whole. However, the need for the South to negotiate as a single bloc has been effectively argued and is widely accepted within the South (see Agarwal, 1992; Brandt, 1980, 1983; Manley, 1991; Nyerere, 1980; Peng, 1992; Ramphal, 1980; South Commission, 1990). The argument for doing so during NIE(nv)O remains the same that it was during NIE(co)O. Individually, or even as subgroupings, the developing states do not have the bargaining power to influence global decisions, and collectively there is enough commonalty in their joint desire for development to effectively negotiate as a bloc. It is also argued that “the concept of the nation state as an arena for independent economic development is becoming increasingly obsolete” (Manley, 1991), and a wave of regional groupings is inevitable, and that the South has a role to play as a major supragroup (South Commission, 1990). However, as the G-77’s experience during UNCED exemplified, surviving as a supragroup is not an easy task when the economic, ideological, and geographic diversity is as great as it is with the South. Negotiation theory, particularly the works by Raiffa (1982) and Sebenius (1984), have some important insights to offer on the issue of coalitions. The important lesson for the South is that while coalitions are often built around broader issues, they usually fall apart around smaller— but more immediate—ones. It is important for the South to adopt a strategy where South-South negotiations are a necessary part of all North-South negotiations. Not only must differentially valued issues and treaties be traded between the North and the South, but similar trades must also take place within the South. For example, the environmental interests of the Sahel states from Africa are markedly different from those of the rainforest nations from South America, or those of the irrigated agricultural countries of South-East Asia. All of these, in turn, are totally different from the issues that concern the economically vibrant Far-Eastern states or OPEC members. On the one hand, there lies the danger of suppressing any particular interest so far as to splinter particular subgroups out of the larger coalition. On the other hand, there is the danger of falling into the lowest common denominator trap in
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trying to keep everyone happy. Both are detrimental to the South’s larger interests. Any strategy for the South, then, must (i) encourage South-South negotiations that allow the trading of differentially valued interests within the South, and (ii) focus primarily on the larger common issues of systemic change while allowing subgroups the lead in focusing on issues of particular interest to them.36 Complementing South-South negotiations is the need for greater South-South cooperation (Mahbub-ul-Haq, 1976, 1980; Manley, 1991; South Commission, 1990). There is much that the nations of the South can learn from the experience of each other, both in economic and environmental fields. The South Commission (1990) points out: “subregional, regional, and interregional cooperation has now become indispensable for [the South’s] sustained growth . . . the rewards of cooperation can, in time, become considerable. But they have to be earned; resources and effort have to be invested, and it takes time to produce results.” Environmental cooperation is likely to be especially beneficial and also devoid of the problems that might arise in economic cooperation. In fact, even in issues of technology transfer, Southern countries probably have as much to learn about sustainable development from each other, as from the North (Peng, 1992; Shiva, 1992b). Finally, the single most important step that the South must take in developing its constituency is to begin viewing its NGIs as allies, rather than adversaries. In fact, till now environmental NGIs from the South have done a better job of winning attention for the South’s agenda than Southern governments. With NGIs taking an increasingly activist role in international environmental negotiations worldwide, a dominant role for Southern NGIs is not just desirable, but imperative. As Agarwal (1992) stresses, “the South has no other choice after Rio but to go out and engage itself in the international dialogue . . . Southern NGOs and intellectuals must play a key role in setting the terms of debate to the maximum extent possible.” The South, as a bloc, would be well advised to (i) encourage the further development of its non-governmental environment-development movement, and (ii) to further incorporate NGIs into the mainstream of international environmental negotiations, on behalf of the South. #7 Clean Up Your Own Act All the diplomatic skills and rhetorical eloquence, taken together, offer no substitute for the tough decisions [required] within the South. MAHBUB-UL-HAQ, FORMER FINANCE MINISTER OF PAKISTAN
If the flag of the NIE(co)O was the interdependence of global systems, the marching tune was self-reliance. For the South, the NIE(nv)O demands nothing less. The
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South Commission (1990) reiterates this view in today’s context: “It is the South’s people who suffer most from the poverty and failings of the South . . . the responsibility to work for change in the present conditions therefore lies firmly with the South.” The power of legitimacy that was referred to earlier can emanate only from what the South does within its own borders. Its criticism of the North’s environmental sins is bound to ring hollow if its own environmental record is scarred. If it is to present development and the provision of a better life for its people as its principal environmental interest, then it must be seen to be working towards this goal at home, independent of which way the negotiations go. If the South’s bargaining position is to be based on a high moral ground, then its actions must justify that moral position. In this regards the question posed by Madhu Kishwar (1992) cannot be ignored: “Why don’t we set our own house in order first?” In answer, India’s Anil Agarwal (1992) underscores the strategic importance of domestic action: “The challenge to the elite leadership of the South has become clear after Rio. If it does not get its house in order, its own internal divisions will be used to clamp greater international restrictions on it. And unless it is able to get greater honesty, efficiency, and self-reliance into its own economic systems, it will be consistently portrayed as a beggar and its morality snatched away. It will then be left in a very weak negotiating position.” The environmental record of the nations of the South itself leaves much to be desired. Till now, the South has been able to get away with pinning the blame for the world’s environmental crisis on the North because the North’s contribution to these problems have been disproportionately large and protracted over time, and the South’s problems have been largely attributable to the lack of resources and development. Yet, not all of the South’s environmental woes are results of the North’s actions or the South’s poverty. In many cases they are the results of the corruption, unaccountability, obfuscation, and lack of democracy in national governance within the South (Kishwar, 1992). In most cases, the disparities between the rich and the poor within the countries of the South are no less than those between North and South. The environmental ramifications of this stark internal division and inequity are as glaring as those of international divisions and inequities. In essence, there is a North and a South within the South, and this internal North-South division has similar environmental repercussions as the global North-South rift. If the South is to maintain the moral high ground—which is its principal source of strength in the emerging NIE(nv)O—it must begin by implementing at home the same systemic changes it is demanding internationally. If it does so,
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its case shall be hard to argue against; if it does not, it shall continue to be seen as nothing more than an irritant, not to be taken seriously in global environmental negotiations. (See Agarwal, 1992; Peng, 1992).
#8 “Winning” Is Not Important; Good Agreements Are In the final analysis humankind must develop economic and social institutions which are just in purpose and democratic in form. Otherwise the world will stumble from one disaster to the next. MICHAEL MANLEY
(1991), FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF JAMAICA
As stated earlier, the hope that NIE(nv)O’s fate may be different from that of NIE(co)O emerges from the belief that, unlike many other international problems, environmental issues are non-zero-sum in character—the pie can be expanded and mutual-gain or win-win strategies are possible. However, it is futile to play a win-win game with a win-lose mind-set (where one party’s victory is measured by the magnitude of the loss to the other party) because parties are liable to refuse a winning strategy for themselves just because it does not represent a “losing” outcome for the other party. The rationale for this last recommendation is to move the reference point for gauging “victory” from how much the other party loses, to how much the planet’s environment gains. In standard economic (for example, trade) or political (for example, armament) negotiations it may be understandable to play a win-lose game. In global environmental negotiations, however, a loss for any party is, by definition, a loss for the planet and thereby for all humanity. This is not to deny that the capability of bearing the costs of mutual gains, as well as the responsibility for causing the problem, are nearly always differentiated and must be borne differentially. The point merely is that the win-lose mind-set that has dominated the world through the heydays of national independence movements and the Cold War is no longer appropriate for environmental diplomacy. (See Benedick, 1991; Mathews, 1992; Porter and Brown, 1991.) Appreciating that negotiation lies not in discrete points but along a continuum, the South is advised to adopt a building-block approach to negotiations rather than an all-or-nothing approach. The wide range of environmental issues that are likely to be negotiated in the future allows the South the opportunity to build on success, across treaties. Rather than seeking a single major victory that would change the world in one bold stroke, the South is better served to adopt a modular approach that seeks blocks of smaller successes that lead to greater
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cumulative change. It may be argued that this is already being done, though by default. What is being recommended, however, is explicit prioritization and planning. The South must come prepared with strategies and priorities not just for a particular negotiation, but negotiations beyond that. Success will be measured not just by what the South takes away from the table at the end of a particular negotiation, but how its gains reinforce (if at all) its previous gains and how it manages to influence the setting of the table for the next set of negotiations. Finally, it must be emphasized that the agreement that emerges from any negotiation is always more important than the fight that goes into it, and that the level of implementation that the agreement enjoys is always more important than the agreement itself. The practical significance of this self-evident advice is that making the other party look bad is not success; success is getting an agreement that will work. Once you have made the other side look bad it is unlikely that they would sign on to an agreement that makes you look good. That the other party is at the table to negotiate is evidence that their agents want an agreement. But a workable agreement is, by definition, an agreement that meets the interests of both parties. To demand justice for five centuries of colonialism is all very good, but to expect it out of sheer benevolence is naive. This is not because the North is necessarily unjust, but because their perceptions of justice may be different from those of the South, or because they see the costs of what the South is demanding as excessive. For a workable agreement to be signed both parties have to be able to say yes. Until now the South has found itself forced into saying no because the North’s proposals have failed to incorporate its interests. It is now time for the South to take the lead in proposing solutions that are “yesable” for both sides.
Conclusion This chapter does not imply that there are any easy strategies, either for the South or the North. There is no easy fix to the issues we confront today. The prescriptions presented here are like a nasty but necessary medicine that needs to be gulped despite its taste. It does not even promise to be a cure. However, it could possibly be a first step toward recovery. The alternative is to follow the advice of Stephan Krasner (1985) who argues that “the international system would be more stable and less conflictual if the North and the South had less to do with each other. From a Northern as well as a Southern perspective collective self-reliance is preferable to greater
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interdependence.” Given the nature of global environmental issues, this advice, if followed, would not just be unfortunate for humanity, but in all likelihood catastrophic for this planet. Although this strategy is addressed entirely to the South, its success will in part depend on how it is received by the North. Some in the North will always see any effort from the South to bargain collectively as an act of confrontation even though the North has always organized itself as an alliance in negotiations with the South (Nyerere, 1980; South Commission, 1990; Ramphal, 1980).37 While a well-organized South—with clearly outlined interests, strategies, and goals—will certainly be able to negotiate more effectively, it would be to the North’s benefit to deal with an organized South rather than with a South whose principal negotiating strategy derives from 500 years of accumulated anger. If ensuring that the North reacts to NIE(nv)O more accommodatingly than it did to NIE(co)O is going to be difficult, it is going to be no less arduous to get the South to adopt a strategy that calls for change and sacrifice at home. The key to this strategy’s success is for the South to move from a reactive mode in international environmental negotiations, to a proactive mode. This will require the South to wrest both the initiative and the leadership; to demonstrate its environmental earnestness, not only to the North, but also to its own populace; and to take tough economic—and political—decisions. The advice given by Down to Earth (1992b) is worth heeding: The lessons are obvious by now and our [the South’s] leaders should learn from them: firstly, stop begging for more aid, secondly, practice efficient management of one’s indigenous resources, and, thirdly, as far as the global dialogue is concerned, propose and jointly fight for their own, alternative vision for global management. Each of us—black, brown, yellow and white—has equal rights to this earth. Hence, a global management system should be proposed that would respect our rights in a way that those who are gluttons of the world’s resources would face clear economic disincentives, while the well-behaved would gain clear incentives. If, in the resulting automatic flow of resources, some cash comes to the South, well and good; if not, the people of the South must learn the discipline of living entirely within only that which is rightfully theirs.
The proposals of this chapter are likely to be unpopular with both the militants and the apologists in the South. The militants are likely to see them as being too weak and condescending to the North; the apologists as too strong and
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aggressive. Even more important—and doubtful—would be support from bureaucrats and politicians who, as ruling elites themselves, will be required to change not just their negotiating strategy but their approach to domestic and international environmental policy. However, for the South to maintain its moral high position, such changes are inevitable and without them its position shall soon be discredited. Such change cannot be easy. However, such change is the price that the South must pay to ensure a better environment for its children tomorrow, and a decent survival for its people today.
Note on Sources U.N. documents, including U.N. General Assembly resolutions, voting records, and transcripts of committee discussions have been an important background source in writing this chapter. Press coverage of UNCHE and UNCED related events and special publications concerned with these conferences have been another important source of information. The following publications were especially useful and their news reports may be cited in the text with publication dates, without being included in the list of references: Boston Globe, Boston, Massachusetts; Brundtland Bulletin, Geneva; Down to Earth, New Delhi; E&D File, 1992:UNCED Briefings, New York; Earth Summit Bulletin, New York; Earth Summit News, Conches; Earth Summit Times, New York and Rio de Janeiro; Earth Summit Update, Washington D.C.; New York Times, New York; South-North Development Monitor (SUNS), Penang, Geneva, New York, Rio de Janeiro; Third World Resurgence, Penang; TerraViva, Rio de Janeiro; Wall Street Journal, New York.
Notes 1. Technically, the official products of UNCED were the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (substituted for the originally intended Earth Charter), the Authoritative Statement of Forest Principles, and Agenda 22, all of which were adopted by consensus (without vote) by the conference. The creation of the Commission on Sustainable Development was proposed in Agenda 21 and was therefore never voted upon and was later created by the U.N. General Assembly. The conventions on climate change and biodiversity were products of independent, but concurrent, processes which were opened for signatures at UNCED and were signed by 153 nations each, with the United States being the notable exception in signing the biodiversity convention and Malaysia refusing to sign the climate change convention. However, the United States of America, under the Clinton administration has since signed the biodiversity convention. 2. Just after the fourth PrepCom in New York, when prospects of meaningful results were at their bleakest, the Chairman of the UNCED preparatory committee, Tommy Koh of
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5.
6.
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8. 9. 10.
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Singapore, pointed out, “there is a rhythm to U.N. negotiations. First, you have confrontation, then a period of crisis, and then resolution”; others pointed out that “the conference is condemned to succeed, because no one wants it to fail”; yet others were afraid that such a success might be “a quiet failure masquerading as a success” (quotes from Newhouse, 1992). In retrospect, all three statements were prophetic. UNCED secretary general, Maurice Strong, in a press conference after UNCED’s closing ceremony, described Rio as a shift in direction because environmental concerns had been widely accepted and articulated; however, he added that “we leave Rio without satisfying commitment for that concern” (quoted in Khor, 1992b). Similarly, Jessica Mathews (1992) found UNCED to be a “notable—perhaps historic—success,” but noted that “UN conferences are notorious for commitments made and not kept.” Officially called the “Independent Commission on International Development Issues,” the Brandt Commission is popularly recognized by the name of its Chairman, Willy Brandt, former chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. The commission included eminent scholars and leaders from both the North and the South including Edward Heath (United Kingdom), Olof Palme (Sweden), and Shridath Ramphal (Guyana). The commission’s original report, North-South: A Program for Survival (Brandt, 1980), was followed three years later by an update, Common Crisis: North-South Cooperation for World Recovery (Brandt, 1983). The South Commission was established in 1987 in response to the idea floated by Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahatir Mohammad at the 1986 Summit meeting of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) at Harare. Chaired by Julius K. Nyerere, former president of Tanzania, with Dr. Manmohan Singh of India as its secretary general, the 28-person commission had representatives from all continents of the South, including Gamani Corea (Sri Lanka) former secretary general of UNCTAD; Michael Manley, former Prime Minister of Jamaica; Carlos Andres Perez, former President of Venezuela; Shridath Ramphal (Guyana), former secretary general of the British Commonwealth; and Dr. Abdus Salam (Pakistan), Nobel Prize winner in physics. The report of the Commission, The Challenge for the South, was published in 1990. Consider for example, the statement by Fernando Collor de Mello, former President of Brazil (quoted in Lang, 1992): “The end of the world’s ideological division has not signaled an era of peace and prosperity but has led to the emergence of a great Empire, the Empire of the North.” More poignant was this statement made by Pakistani diplomat Tariq Hyder, speaking for the G-77, during the fourth UNCED PrepCom (SUNS, April 4, 1992): “We [the South] do not want our freedom after independence, which has been so short, and in many ways illusory . . . to be constrained by new environmental conditionalities which could be equated with environmental colonialism.” While these individual treaties are not the subject of this chapter it needs to be pointed out that even if weak and unenforceable, they give the North the basic framework for what it wanted, to the South they gave little, except in keeping out some of the things it opposes (see Haas and others, 1992; IIED, 1992; Shiva, 1992b; Third World Resurgence, 1992). For a more detailed comparison of UNCHE and UNCED see Najam (1992). Ironically, 1972 turned out to be the year of the Watergate scandal. The Soviet-led boycott of the Stockholm conference came in response to the West’s refusal to let the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) participate, but was a complex and delicately timed affair motivated more by the politics of the negotiations leading to Willy Brandt’s cherished goal of Ostpolitik (Brandt, 1976). In response to a joint
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proposal from the United States of America and Great Britain, the U.N. General Assembly, through its resolution 2850 (XXVI), decided to apply the 26-year-old “Vienna formula” allowing full participation at Stockholm only to “State members of the United Nations or members of specialized agencies or of the International Atomic Energy Agency.” This meant that West Germany, as member of UNESCO and WHO, could attend, but East Germany could not. The resolution received 104 votes in favor, with nine against (Bulgaria, Byelorussia, Congo, Czechoslovakia, Hungry, Mongolia, Poland, Ukraine, USSR), seven abstentions (Chile, Cuba, Guinea, India, Jamaica, Romania, Yugoslavia) and 12 nations absent. Of those opposed only Congo participated at Stockholm; of the abstainers only Cuba stayed away; the notable absentees were Albania and China. Ironically, the “Big Four Accord,” that paved the way for the simultaneous entry of the two Germanies into the U.N., was signed in Berlin on June 4, 1972, at about the same time as the U.N. secretary general, Kurt Waldheim, opened UNCHE (voting records and resolutions from Djonovich, 1975; also Pell and Case, 1972; Rowland, 1973; Clarke and Timberlake, 1982). 11. It would be a mistake to believe that the Soviet absence from the UNCHE conference halls amounted to a lack of influence on conference outcomes. The USSR and its allies had been active participants during the UNCHE preparatory process. During the conference itself the UNCHE secretary general, Maurice Strong, held daily secret meetings with the Soviet Ambassador to keep him abreast of events. Hopes of a last minute arrival by the Soviet Union and East Germany were kept alive. In fact, 30 Volvos and Saabs, 220 hotel beds, and one vice chairmanship were left open during the first couple of days in anticipation of a compromise. At one point, a compromise acceptable to the West Germans was reached which would have given East Germany working participation without the right to vote. However, an unfortunately worded New York Times story prompted the Soviet bloc to break off the talks. Yet, the Soviets remained an influential player through their participation in the preparatory process, through their allies at UNCHE and most importantly at the postconference meetings of the U.N. General assembly. In fact, when the General Assembly operationalized one of Stockholm’s key decisions by establishing the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the USSR was one of the 54 member states elected. Interestingly, both East and West Germany (who had just been admitted to the United Nations) were also elected, as were other boycotters, Czechoslovakia and Poland (United Nations, 1972; Pell and Case, 1972; Rowland, 1973; Clarke and Timberlake, 1982). It could be argued that the USSR shaped the UNCHE agenda more despite its boycott than its breakup states shaped the UNCED agenda in spite of their presence. 12. In a move that took his long-time American allies by surprise, the Vietnam issue was brought up first by the host Premier, Olof Palme. In a strongly worded speech he condemned ecological warfare in Southeast Asia. However, the U.S. State Department considered Vietnam extraneous to UNCHE and felt deeply disturbed at what the chief U.S. delegate at Stockholm considered gratuitous politicizing of the conference. Nuclear test-bans were another Cold War issue that dogged UNCHE. Peru and New Zealand were the initiators, aiming their wrath against France, at that time conducting such tests in the South Pacific. The U.S. proposal to call for banning such atmospheric tests was met unfavorably by China, joined by some Southern nations, who wanted “the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons.” The Chinese spoke out against “nuclear monopoly, nuclear threats, nuclear blackmail . . . [and] . . . nuclear stockpiling . . . by the superpowers”
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(United Nations, 1972; Hill, 1972; Rowland, 1973; Pell and Case, 1972; New York Times, June 7, 8, 11 and 14, 1972). Canada, the United States of America, and Sweden had presented draft proposals during the preparatory process. In The Plot to Save the World, UNCHE historian Wade Rowland (1973) writes that “the documents produced by United States of America and Sweden were innocuous in the extreme” and were described as “shocking nondeclarations” by one delegate. It was from the Canadian proposal that the draft declaration emerged. In some cases, such as those in the Pacific Rim, the economic conditions had improved dramatically. However, in most countries things remained as bad, and in some—especially in Africa—had turned worse (South Commission,1990; Bello, 1989). The official report of the Stockholm conference (United Nations, 1972) as well as other accounts of its deliberations (Rowland, 1973; United Nations Environment Programme, 1982) fondly refer to it as the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, and foresee a second such conference. In fact, a resolution passed at Stockholm called on the U.N. General Assembly to “convene a second United Nations Conference on the Human Environment.” Canada and Mexico even offered to be its hosts. Interestingly similar calls were also made at Rio, and once again Canada offered to be a prospective host. The 1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) is popularly known as Our Common Future (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987), while the Commission itself is remembered by the name of its chairperson, Gro Harlem Brundtland, prime minister of Norway. The WCED Report was one of the motivations behind UNCED and was specifically mentioned in the first U.N. General Assembly resolution (No. 43/196) on the subject. Earlier, resolution 42/187 had, in welcoming the WCED Report, paved the way for the inclusion of the sustainable development concept into U.N. vocabulary. Even the world’s leading financial institutions have begun embracing the linkage, at least in words. The UNCED momentum was largely instrumental in the publication and timing of the first World Bank Development Report that focused on development and environment (World Bank, 1992; see also Steer, 1992). Interestingly, the 1992 report’s major thrust is little different from the statement made by the Bank’s then-president, Robert McNamara, who had stated at Stockholm: “There is no evidence that the economic growth which the developing countries so desperately require will necessarily involve an unacceptable burden on either their own or anybody else’s environment” (quoted in Rowland, 1973). Interestingly, at Stockholm the World Bank was proudly boasting of the (then) recently established post of environmental advisor while at Rio it was boasting of its (now) recently updated environmental division. The questions of finance—of additionality and responsibility—which the South thought had already been settled by 44/228, were reopened and left hanging. While some additional money was committed, no framework of commitment was developed. More importantly, the money committed was assistance rather than compensation and was thereby subject to the same donor control and political motivation as all existing aid. In the case of institutional reform—that is, of democracy and transparency in international governance—the innovative mechanisms and institutional improvements that 44/228 had been looking for were not found and the status quo ensued. While the UN Commission on Sustainable Development is some headway, the principal institution of concern to the South, the World Bank, remains as undemocratic and untransparent in its functioning as ever. The
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19.
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21. 22.
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issue of technology transfer, which lies at the intersection of the institutional and financial arrangements, suffered a similar fate and was sacrificed at the altar of intellectual property rights. Given the South’s strength of numbers the North has long been wary of allowing the South to play too forceful a role in international institutions. Werner Levi (1979) was pointing out 14 years ago that the international legal system is being “disadvantageously affected” because “the developing states are changing their tactics from making demands in international forums to assuming active roles in international institutions; they are trying to use international law to obtain a greater share of the world’s wealth; and above all, and affecting everything else, the developed and developing states take two totally different approaches to the regulation of their relationship.” His last insight is of great relevance. The single biggest hurdle in the UNCED process remained the totally different meanings that the North and the South attach to environment, development, and the environmentdevelopment interaction. For an interesting record of the development of the NIE(co)O/North-South debate within international fora see A New International Economic Order: Selected Documents 1945–1975 (UNITAR, 1976). Also see The North-South Dialogue: A Brief History ( Jones, 1983), The Emergence of the NIEO Ideology (Murphy, 1984) and Global Dialogue: The New International Order (Menon, 1977). Bhagwati (1977) and Doran and others (1983) provide a good sampling of the dependency debate; the story of the oil crisis of 1973 and its effects on the NorthSouth dialogue are discussed in Allen (1979) and Askari and Cummings (1978); and the implications of the NIE(co)O movement for the South are discussed in detail in Agarwala (1983) and Haq (1980). For a review of the history of the G-77 see Geldart and Lyon (1980) and for an authoritative sampling of the views that shaped the NIE(co)O see The Poverty Curtain (Mahbub-ul-Haq, 1976). For a useful discussion on the South’s insistence on changing international economic regimes see Krasner (1985). The current credibility of the Bretton Woods twins in the South ranges from those who consider them to be tools of neocolonialism to those who consider them necessary evils. Works such as Development Debacle: The World Bank in Philippines (Bello and others, 1982) have detailed how programs sponsored by these agencies have sometimes been detrimental to the South’s development. Few, if any, in the South consider the existing framework of these institutions as democratic or sympathetic to the South’s interests (see Abugre, 1992; Bakshi, 1992; Bello, 1989; George, 1988; Lang, 1992; Peng, 1991; Shiva, 1992a; South Commission, 1990; Woddis, 1967). Illustrative of the reasons behind the South’s disdain for the World Bank was a recent confidential memo from the bank’s chief economist, Lawrence Summers, in which he asked, “Shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [less developed countries]?” In preempting the arguments against such a proposal he notes that “the problem with arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every [World] Bank proposal for liberalization” (Economist, 1992). Like many in the South, Susan George found it to be “a perfect example of what the Bank thinks and is” (quoted in BankCheck, 1992). For a useful discussion of how the South may become an important force in future environmental dialogue see Marc William (1993).
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24. What can be especially promising for the South is that scholars, and even politicians, in the North have realized that environmental management may require new economic paradigms (see for example Daly, 1977, 1991; Gore, 1992). While their proposals may be different from those of the South, the common thrust reinforces the South’s interests. 25. This strategy is based on the insights received from major texts in negotiation theory. Of particular importance are The Art and Science of Negotiation (Raiffa, 1982), Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement (Pruitt and Rubin,1986), Breaking the Impasse (Susskind and Cruikshank, 1987), The Practical Negotiator (Zartman and Berman, 1982), Getting Together (Fisher and Brown, 1988), and Getting to YES (Fisher and others, 1991). Specifically on international environmental negotiations this strategy is influenced by Chapter 7 of Lawrence E. Susskind’s forthcoming Environmental Diplomacy: Negotiating More Effective Global Agreements (Susskind, 1992) and by the proposals of the Salzburg Initiative (Susskind, 1992). 26. This is not to suggest that the past is past and therefore irrelevant. The South’s case for demanding reparation is indeed compelling. However, while the past is never inconsequential, it must always be placed and seen in context. The South needs to build the case for past compensation logically, rather than emotionally. To ask the North to pay for the sins of Christopher Columbus and the havoc of five centuries of colonialism is tempting, but futile. Yet, to insist on changes in the systems that are the legacies of those practices is both desirable and logical. 27. This section is largely influenced by presentations given by Prof. Roger Fisher (on 9 December, 1992) and by Prof. Lawrence Susskind (on 8 April, 1993) as part of various Program on Negotiation seminars. It is also informed by McCarthy (1991), Fisher (1991), and Fisher and others (1991). For an interesting case study discussion on how weak nations bargain with strong nations see Power and Tactics in International Negotiation by William Mark Habeeb (1988). 28. To cite two examples, while the South’s contribution to ozone depletion is minimal, it will be affected no less than those who have benefited from the chemical use that created the problem. Similarly, the South is likely to suffer at the hands of climate change far disproportionately from its contribution. 29. Prof. Roger Fisher cites six “crippling assumptions” about negotiation: (i) we are more powerful and therefore we can relax; (ii) we are less powerful and therefore there is no point in trying; (iii) all power is fungible; (iv) the power to destroy is the power to persuade; (v) pain is equal to pressure; and (vi) military power is equal to negotiating power. In international environmental negotiations the North has long been caught in the first of these, while to varying degrees the South has succumbed to all the remaining five. 30. If interests are what brings a party to the negotiation table and the process is what drives them towards mutual-gain solutions, BATNA—or best alternative to a negotiated agreement—is what tells them when to say “yes” and when to walk out. In describing this concept, Fisher and others (1991) stress that “the relative negotiating power of two parties depends primarily upon how attractive to each is the option of not reaching agreement.” BATNA gives the negotiator a realistic measure of what exactly is a good, bad or just acceptable agreement. While BATNAs are liable to change as negotiations progress, and while BATNA assessment is never simple (Raiffa, 1982), investment of time and effort in carefully understanding and developing one’s BATNA is always worthwhile. According to Susskind and Cruikshank (1987) there is no better advice for a negotiator than: “Know
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31. 32.
33.
34.
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your BATNA and don’t lose sight of it.” More difficult, but extremely important, is an understanding of the other party’s BATNA. Whereas the knowledge of one’s own BATNA affords a negotiator a safety net against bad agreements, an appreciation of the other party’s BATNA can accelerate good agreements. Quoted in Third World Resurgence, Aug-Sep, 1992. An important manifestation of a redefined agenda is the reframing of issues already on the table. As an example, consider the thorny question of financial arrangements. The South demands financial assistance but is unwilling to relinquish control of its sovereignty. The North, even where willing to pay, doubts the South’s capacity (French, 1992; Chayes and Skolnikoff, 1992) and will (Hollick and Cooper, 1991) to fulfill any commitments it makes. Reframing the debate from one of delivery of aid to compensation for liability and services—as some in the South have been proposing (see Agarwal and Narain, 1991; Agarwal, 1992; Peng, 1992)—may, in fact, be a win-win solution. Agarwal’s (1992) proposal is that “the argument that the rich must pay their ecological bills must ring out loud and clear.” However, he realizes that committing to such a strategy might include going a step further and “the South must be prepared to take the moral high ground, where it must make it absolutely clear that it is not looking out for any money whatsoever. It should ask for nothing less than systemic changes in the world’s political and financial systems so that fair and equitable systems of environmental discipline can be enforced for all, including the South . . . And in this process the South should make it clear that if it gets anything, well and good, but otherwise it does not want a penny more.” For related discussion; see Agarwal and Narain, 1991; Benedick, 1991; Chayes, 1991; Mathews, 1991; Peng, 1992; Sand, 1991; Schelling, 1991; Sebenius, 1984, 1991; Skolnikoff, 1990; Susskind, 1992. At one point during the protracted and unproductive debate on the Declaration, a Canadian delegate suggested that he envisioned it as a “poetic and inspirational statement that could inspire ecological values in the next generation: something a little girl could hang on her bedroom wall.” To this, one Southern delegate reportedly replied, “in my country little girls do not have bedrooms.” This was a defining moment which exemplified the stark differences between environmental perceptions of the North and the South. Interestingly, at Stockholm too the North had intended the declaration to be a brief poetic statement, while the South had insisted that it be a tangible statement of principles. The U.S. delegation, for instance, remained unhappy with the text, particularly principle 3 (opposition to the right to develop), principle 7 (rejection of any interpretation that would imply a recognition or acceptance by the United States of any international obligations or liabilities, or any diminution in the responsibilities of developing countries), principle 12 (insistence that in certain situations, trade measures may provide an effective and appropriate means of addressing environmental concerns), and principle 23 (insistence that nothing in the Declaration prejudices or predetermines the status of any territories under occupation or the natural resources that appertain to such territories; also, insistence that the Declaration does not affect the rights and duties of occupying powers under the laws of war). The United States kept the Declaration open till the closing moments of the conference, when with no other country joining in their protest, they issued a written statement listing their formal reservations (in parentheses above) as interpretive statements for the record. The only contentious issue that remained was principle 23 referring to people under occupation. After extensive brokering by conference Chairman Tommy Koh, a compromise was reached whereby the language remained unchanged in the Declaration but all
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references to “people under occupation” were removed from Agenda 21 (various issues of TerraViva, Earth Summit Times, Earth Summit News, and SUNS). 36. The second implies a strategy similar to that adopted by the North where European and North American nations remain in a loose alliance that allows them to disassociate efforts when needed, without dissolving the larger tactical alliance. 37. Arguably, the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Group-of-7 (G-7) are bloc coalitions of the North, just as the G-77 is a coalition of the South.
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Y PART TWO
A SHIFTING CAST OF CHARACTERS Beyond the State as Unitary Actor
nternational environmental treaties are no longer the domain of governments alone. Whether in identifying environmental problems for global discussion, shaping the interests and positions of the states involved in the negotiations, or monitoring nations after ratification to ensure compliance, states are far from the only parties involved. Who comprises this new cast of characters? Chief among them are the members of the private sector, NGOs, networks of academics, and the media. Any discussion of global environmental politics would be wildly incomplete without highlighting the importance of nonstate actors. Relative to other international agreements, the environmental policy cycle has included nonstate actors as essential players; these have included nongovernmental organizations, industry groups, and scientific organizations. NGOs, scientists, and the private sector have helped to identify environmental issues and place them on the international agenda. They have also played decisive roles in the creation of the international regimes themselves, and in determining their effectiveness. According to one estimate, the number of multinational corporations has grown from 7,000 in 1970 to over 50,000 with 400,000 subsidiaries by 1998. Since the stakes for them are high, it is not surprising that they have a found a way in to global environmental treaty making. These nonstate actors constantly provide expertise, advice, and political pressure during the entire cycle of international environmental negotiations. In
I
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differing ways, NGOs and industry groups can often change the mix of political costs associated with not having an agreement. Depending upon the strength of their constituencies in both domestic and international settings, these actors can exert a great deal of political pressure on negotiators. Such pressure helps maintain political momentum when negotiations begin to drag or lose their urgency. Scientific communities bring issues to the table and help to draw attention to them in different ways. Such groups and individuals often report scientific findings or the results of broad assessments of problems such as the recent reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Nonstate actors play seminal roles during and after the formation of environmental regimes as well. In the creation of a regime, scientists, industrial spokesmen, and environmental advocates often form part of official negotiating delegations, or serve as facilitators and advisors during that process. Advocates and industry representatives often rely on their clout with the media or their influence with key decision makers. The following chapters discuss the evolving role and influence of non-governmental actors in environmental treaty making, and suggest ways in which these actors might contribute to collaborative decision making.
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Y CHAPTER FOUR
VOLUNTARY CODES OF MANAGEMENT New Opportunities for Increased Corporate Accountability Anne M. Weiss
fter 25 years of U.S. government attempts to regulate companies so that they better meet the expectations of society, industry has recently emerged not only as a prominent contributor to environmental problems, but also as a resource for solving them. This new business role—helping to slow or reverse environmental degradation—has prompted many companies to proclaim the benefits of environmental conservation and management programs. Voluntary corporate environmental management programs like the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) Principles, the Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI), Responsible Care, and the Business Charter for Sustainable Development were all initiated between 1989 and 1991. Skeptics believe the newly espoused environmental programs are public relations maneuvers or programs that provoke only marginal environmental changes. However, as a result of such voluntary codes of environmental management, many firms have undertaken activities including environmental auditing, public disclosure, and the incorporation of environmental representatives on the boards of directors. While these actions are not widely publicized, they often expose the firm to increased scrutiny.
A
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Incentives to Improve Environmental Performance Why have companies sought to improve environmental performance? Companies have realized that a variety of stakeholders—from the general public to shareholders—can dramatically affect siting, insurance and purchasing decisions, and regulation. Companies seek to appease these influences by improving credibility as legitimate environmental actors. One mechanism for gaining public respect and confidence is to go beyond compliance, or to add a level of accountability through increased disclosure, and commit to continual environmental improvement. Increasingly, companies are adopting voluntary codes of environmental management as tools for improving accountability and for raising their credibility as responsible environmental actors. Often they are driven to improve environmental performance even when they do not benefit significantly from improved public relations. This chapter acknowledges the presence and influence of economic explanations for corporate environmental actions, but asserts that corporations adopt voluntary codes of management in response to changing environmental and social norms in an attempt to increase their legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of stakeholders. Stakeholder Pressure Environmental organizations frequently have tried to convince firms to improve their environmental performance by arguing that it is economically beneficial to adopt more extensive environmental management practices. Many companies have publicly affirmed the value that such practices add to their operations. The economic benefits a company can achieve from instituting such practices, however, do not fully explain the increase in corporate expenditures on environmental programs. Studies suggest that factors motivating corporate environmental reform exist beyond the firm’s boundaries and outside of the rational economic model (Hoffman, 1995). External pressures on the firm for increased environmental management include competitor behavior, government, and environmental interest groups, as well as the firm’s stakeholders. Stakeholders are individuals or groups who have interests at stake in a corporation. They include the individual and pension shareholders, owners, employees, customers or clients, suppliers, and the community within which the corporation conducts business. Considering the scale and scope of corporate influence, this could include virtually everyone. While stakeholders have diverse interests, they all share a concern about the role that business
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plays in society and the need for companies to develop new ways to accommodate emerging social needs and concerns. Corporate Influence and Expansion Even when U.S. corporations operated predominantly within the country and exported only their own products, there was concern that they might abuse their power. Still, it was assumed that the state could control corporate power though anti-trust regulation and labor agreements. Acceptance of corporate profit making was based on the notion that corporate activity was subject to state control and that profit maximizing was a societal good. During the last decade, corporate power and related concerns have escalated because corporations have found it profitable to export capital and set up production facilities in other countries. Once it became evident that large corporations could escape societal and state control by becoming multinational entities, corporate legitimacy began to disintegrate (Gordy, 1993; Monks, 1990). The declining social acceptance of the current corporate system is “directly related to perceived inconsistencies between the way firms do business and the changing goals and priorities of people in society, in other words, a questioning of corporate power and authority, and of how that authority is being used” (Sutton, 1993, p. 3). A multinational corporation might have operations in 60 countries, employ hundreds of thousands of people, command vast amounts of resources, and control sums of wealth that are greater than the GDP of many individual nations. The multinational however, is not the only corporation with vast authority. In the United States, large domestic corporations also undertake a substantial part of total economic activity. Corporations are often the single employer in a town or county. They are a major economic force, able to radically affect entire regions as they expand or lay off employees. They provide the physical and natural environment for consumers and nonconsumers on the domestic or international scale in which their employees live and work. Their development of toxic or carcinogenic substances can affect the safety and quality of life for national and international populations (Bavaria, 1986). Throughout the world there are social pressures, in varying degrees of intensity, demanding that power be used for the public benefit. As the wealth and power of corporations increase, the public need and demand for accountability become increasingly direct (Berle and Means, 1933). While corporations will continue to both affect and rely upon the well-being of society and the natural environment, it is not reasonable to expect industry to shape the future of societies solely according to societies’ own needs. Business leaders are being summoned to address a significant number of challenges that previously were duties of the public
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sector or had not yet reached the scope of today’s challenges. While individual business executives may not consider themselves to be wielders of power, the sheer scale of corporate activity indicates otherwise.
Corporate Responsibility Until recent decades, the singular corporate goal of pursuing profits went largely unchallenged, and the corporation was perceived as successful in fulfilling its purpose. The recent movement to influence business activity toward social responsibility has emerged for several reasons. First, concerns mounted with the recognition that societal problems are outdistancing the capacity of public agencies to deal with them, and that corporate activity may contribute to these social problems. Second, there arose widespread recognition that corporations wield a great amount of power, with limited accountability. Third, societal values have changed immensely; short-term financial gain at the expense of resources, the environment, and the “quality of life” in general is no longer accorded the acceptance it once enjoyed (Sutton, 1993). Increasing recognition of the negative externalities attributed to the market economy approach has resulted in a multitude of attempts to control business activity and to make corporations more responsive to societal concerns. This two-decade trend of holding corporate managers accountable for socially damaging policies has been termed “corporate social responsibility.” Criteria for an Environmentally Responsible Company Several models have attempted to fit environmentally responsible corporate activities into categories like core, expanded, and sustainable. These terms are intended to describe the types of activities in which a company participates and its commitment to environmentally responsible behavior ( Joly, 1992). Other models describe a broad spectrum ranging from those firms that have never considered the environment to those firms devoted solely to improving the environment (Ford, 1992). One could argue that an extractive industry (such as oil or timber) is inherently environmentally destructive and does not promote social responsibility. However, one could argue that it is possible for industries to be managed responsibly; some corporations are proactive in worker safety, recycle their waste, and are technologically innovative. Debate also surrounds those industries whose purpose is the manufacture of pollution control technology or remediation techniques. To some, these practices appear to be environmentally beneficial, while to others, such
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practices seem to profit from and thereby promote environmentally destructive behavior. While these models offer a basis for analyzing corporate responsibility, they are still overly simplistic and rely on the easy categorization of corporate activity. It is important to evaluate production processes, management policies and practices, and areas of the company’s activities that may conflict with environmental goals, in order to determine the level of company responsibility. To date, there exists no generally accepted definition of what is socially and environmentally responsible. There are no specific criteria that a company must follow or actions that it must avoid. As demands from stakeholders are more clearly articulated, it is likely that the requirements for corporate environmental responsibility will evolve. Trends in Social and Environmental Responsibility Although many companies began social responsibility programs in the 1960s, these attempts were insufficient to meet public expectations. Businesses of all sizes were questioned about their ability to provide quality services and products. The public demanded labels and advertising that was honest and more complete (Corson and Steiner, 1974), as well as more information about impending plant closures, toxic chemical use and transportation, and health risks to employees. Disclosure of this information has been, and remains, the most difficult aspect of social responsibility for companies.
Government Regulation In an effort to control business activities and their negative impacts on society, the U.S. government turned to regulation. There are numerous laws that attempt to regulate the environmental effects of contaminants. They range from controls on specific emissions, to laws prescribing specific technologies, to retroactive laws aimed at cleaning up contaminated sites, to laws requiring the public sharing of information. They have resulted in significant improvements in air, water, and soil quality and occupational health and safety. While it is widely accepted that these laws have had a positive impact on the natural environment, it is debatable whether they remain appropriate or necessary. Economists, business managers, and environmental researchers and advocates are familiar with the concept of diminishing returns: large quantities of emissions or contamination may be reduced or remediated with an initial investment. But removal of the last 10 percent or so might cost as much as the initial 90 percent. In addition, most existing environmental regulations aim to control pollution by
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prescribing specific technologies or performance standards. Yet, business leaders and many environmental researchers and advocates now recognize that environmental issues are increasingly complex and extend beyond the scope of traditional regulation.1 As a result, such command-and-control regulations have been severely criticized as economically inefficient and ineffective in addressing the moving targets of many environmental problems (Orts, 1995). However, this mutual recognition of the relative decline in benefits derived from strict command-andcontrol regulation does not translate into agreement on the direction that environmental laws should take now and in the future. There are several factors that explain why legislative approaches are limited in their ability to achieve a balance between corporate behavior and the needs of society as a whole. Stone suggests that it is the very nature of law that stifles its ability to achieve corporate responsibility. First, laws are often devised in response to events and are limited by availability of scientific and technical knowledge. Uniform statutes are not easily adapted to changing circumstances. Because laws face a time lag problem, they are often passed only after the damage has been done, and the damage is frequently severe (Stone, 1975). Second, corporations often play a very large role in formulating the laws that govern them. This is not necessarily the result of corporate bribery or intimidation to attain influence. Rather, corporations have an interest in reasonable regulations and are often willing to supply relevant data to help determine standards, technology, or time lines. Third, society often attempts to create legislation in response to situations that lack consensus on cause, effect, and outcome. Under these circumstances, laws tend to be vague, cumbersome, and inconsistent, and might not even address the problem. While societal expectations are continually changing, law is more formal and requires consensus and a general level of consistency. Fourth, the law is generally an expensive means for regulating corporate behavior (Stone, 1975). It works reasonably well when it seeks to address minimum standards for corporate conduct, but falters when it tries to establish ideals. Attempts to legislate beyond a minimal level generally result in high costs of implementation and enforcement (Stone, 1975).
Alternatives to Additional Legislation and Command-and-Control Regulation Generally, the drive to intervene for environmental purposes has originated with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) concerned about activities they view as harmful to the environment, and with governments that impose command-andcontrol regulations. Increasingly however, companies are utilizing nonregulatory, alternative guidelines (henceforth called voluntary codes2) to proactively manage
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their environmental impacts in an effort to gain public trust and institutional legitimacy. Several different voluntary corporate standards have been created, all with similar goals—to introduce to business the idea of an environmental ethic and to design a framework for information generation and evaluation. The codes of management are not “regulatory” in nature and do not dictate standards or methods by which to meet goals. Rather, the voluntary environmental codes are general recommendations intended to guide companies toward important environmental issues, thereby allowing each industry and company to tailor its own environmental programs as appropriate. The adoption of voluntary management codes is on the rise in the United States and elsewhere. This chapter asserts that by committing to such guidelines, corporations are striving to change public perception and to gain stakeholder approval of corporate activities. A Corporate Advantage? Voluntary environmental codes offer short- and long-term benefits. Addressing environmental problems often reduces the costs of production. Voluntary standards enable companies to hurdle regulation, thus eliminating the need for more environmental mandates. In minimizing the risk of future regulatory demands, companies reduce litigation and remediation costs (Fri, 1992). Alternatively, if business leaders ignore environmental initiatives until they appear on an official agenda, the leaders find that they are subject to demands that they already could have anticipated and incorporated into management practices (Fri, 1992; Wright, 1994). If voluntary standards or elements of voluntary codes were to become compulsory, companies which have environmental management and reporting frameworks would have a competitive advantage in the race to stay ahead of regulations and public concerns (Skinner, 1993).3 The promotion of a voluntary code can provide stability for a company. Environmental codes of management allow corporations to create a context for environmental actions by utilizing a single system of audits and accounting, and to employ consistency in production processes. A voluntary code translates amorphous demands from stakeholders into a program for consistent improvement in all stages of corporate activity. An equilibrium in expectation and regulation allows companies to make confident decisions and investments in long-term environmental improvement that will not be undermined if the political climate changes (Susskind, 1992). Voluntary codes, if promulgated fully, also have the benefit of improving a corporation’s reputation. If the reputation of a corporation is questionable, or no
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longer accepted, eventually the firm will lose public approval. Corporations that face a loss in credibility—which, in turn, generates concern for their ability to provide material needs while managing the environment—must develop mechanisms “for the production and maintenance of impersonal trust” (Simmons and Wynne, 1993, p. 203). One mechanism for reducing uncertainty is to establish the rules by which the institution will be governed. By establishing “diffuse relations of trust based on the shared expectations about the social rules that govern a particular activity or situation,” corporations can increase their credibility in the eyes of the public (Simmons and Wynne, 1993, p. 202). Creating impersonal trust through voluntary codes of management helps corporations to meet the proactive environmental stance that stakeholders increasingly are coming to expect. A strong environmental reputation positively affects demand for a corporation’s existing products, as well as the corporation’s ability to recruit scientists and researchers who develop new and competitive, quality products. Recent market surveys conducted by Gallup and Harris indicate that consumers are willing to pay more for environmentally sensitive products, and 70 to 80 percent of consumers have indicated that environmental policies affect their purchasing decisions (Smith, 1991). While going beyond compliance to preserve one’s reputation can reduce short-term profitability, efforts to maintain a good relationship with key stakeholders and preserve a good reputation in the market are sound practices that are likely to pay off in the longer term (Fri, 1992). The Concept of Voluntary Codes of Management Initially, companies responded to increasing pressure from stakeholders by including environmental information in annual reports and other public materials. The information provided has ranged from one sentence about “environmental friendliness” or “sustainable development” to lengthy documents discussing production techniques, emission levels, compliance records, and waste disposal techniques. Despite the trend towards increased availability of information, the wide disparity in information provided has not allowed an easy analysis of companies’ environmental commitments and long-term management strategies. Disclosure of information has also been disconcerting for companies that wish to act and be perceived as environmentally committed, but are unsure of the factors on which they will be evaluated and how their information will be interpreted. As global markets expand, so does public awareness of multinational activity and its impact on the environment. Stakeholders are no longer convinced that existing methods of disposal, and levels of energy consumption and pollution caused by corporate activity, are necessary sacrifices they must make in exchange for the goods they desire. Society has come to expect businesses to take on more
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responsibility for the impacts of their activities on the environment and human health. Fueled by the view that businesses have the capacity and opportunity to cause significant change in the environment, the public has come to question companies’ current practices. In addition, compliance with government-imposed environmental standards has not provided assurance to the stakeholders who are concerned about corporate behavior. As a result, pressure groups are looking for ways to create regulation that is less rigid and uses market and social pressures to impose change on corporate activities.
Examples of Voluntary Codes of Management European Voluntary Codes Institutions that set national standards have been competing to develop a definitive environmental management system (EMS) standard. The British Standards Institute was the first organization to submit a draft EMS standard, British Standard (BS) 7750. BS 7750 recommends that corporations define, document and communicate their environmental policy; define responsibility; set specific environmental objectives; maintain documentation and management records; and conduct audits. The guidelines do not suggest external audits, specify the disclosure of general records or records from audits, or require continual improvement. Shortly after BS 7750 was submitted, the French standards body, AFNOR, submitted its own EMS standard. Spain and Ireland soon followed. In October 1994, the European standards body (CEN) accepted a formal mandate from the European Commission to establish a European-level EMS standard. Meanwhile the International Standards Organization (ISO) is currently drafting an international standard, ISO 14001 (Orts, 1995). The goal of ISO 14001 is to influence companies to create measurable environmental management systems. In the summer of 1993, negotiations began between the ISO, environmental ministries, and corporations in an attempt to incorporate an environmental component into existing, internationally accepted ISO 9000 quality standards. ISO 14001 is the result. It is expected be ready for adoption in late 1996, but several more years will pass before it is in widespread use.4 In the meantime, ISO 9000 certification5 is now required for all products sold in Europe,6 and proponents suggest that ISO 14001 will also be a de facto requirement for production, distribution, and supply of products throughout the European Union (Oppenheimer and others, 1995; Orts, 1995; EWWE, 1994). The appeal for creating the ISO 14001 code in the image of ISO 9000 is that it would increase pressure on companies to consider the environment in their
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decision making. The argument is that environmental issues affect a company’s productivity and ability to provide quality services and, therefore, environmental policies within a company should be recognized as part of the quality of a company. The current draft of ISO 14001 would require businesses to establish and document environmental management systems. Some concepts not included in the ISO 14001 draft standard are auditing, with regard to continual improvement standards, and a public environmental statement that summarizes the results of the audit (EWWE, 1994). As with ISO 9000, there exists concern that it is possible for a company to produce a well-documented system without achieving the desired effect of environmental benefit. ISO 14001 has the potential to significantly affect corporate environmental performance, provided that the internal environmental policies that companies adopt bring about necessary improvements in production and management processes. At this time, the precise guidelines have yet to be determined. A similar attempt to affect corporate behavior through voluntary mechanisms, and one that could also have widespread and international implications, is the European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS).7 In fact, the European standards body has decided that ISO 14001 is compatible with EMAS and intends to use ISO 14001 as the European standard; at the same time, EMAS is influencing ISO discussions. The EMAS program was initiated by the European Union Commission, a government agency. The program is very similar to ISO 14001. However, EMAS requires the adoption of a corporate environmental policy and an environmental statement that illustrates a systematic approach to environmental protection. Member corporations must evaluate the effects of current and past operations and activities (Oppenheimer and others, 1995). EMAS also requires public disclosure of the results of periodic environmental audits (every three years with internal auditors chosen by the company) of the management systems and environmental performance. These statements are verified by accredited environmental specialists who register with designated regulatory bodies (Orts, 1995). ISO 14001 requires audits but does not specify audit frequency. In both programs, companies must undertake an initial environmental review, from which environmental programs and management systems for registered sites are established. United States Government-Generated Voluntary Codes Nothing near the level of EMAS or ISO 14001 has yet been considered seriously in the United States. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently under pressure to regulate with a lighter hand and to issue directives based on voluntary participation.
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The 33/50 Program. The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 required the EPA to
institute a number of voluntary programs that were aimed at promoting pollution prevention. The more popular program, the “33/50” program, solicited companies to voluntarily participate in the reduction of 17 toxic chemicals. Based on the baseline data from the 1988 Toxics Release Inventory, the companies were asked to reduce emissions 33 percent by 1992 and 50 percent by 1995. Participants in the program include 1200 American corporations. Although participating companies have reduced their use of toxic chemicals, the program has been met with mixed reviews.8 Audits. In response to the massive chemical accident in Bhopal, India, the
Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) Title III legislation was passed to establish formal right-to-know procedures and to require publication of inventories of toxic compounds. SARA legislation allows environmental advocates, residents, and regulators to compare the amounts of certain chemical emissions that a company releases annually, beginning in 1988 (the first year the information was required). Since that time, companies have been under increasing pressure by these groups to provide more information. Stakeholders demand data regarding management systems, environmental policies, release levels at individual facilities, and a multitude of other information about a company’s environmental responsibility. Advocates of environmental audits assert that an audit would determine if the appropriate and necessary management systems are in place and functioning, much as a financial audit forces a company to take account of its revenue, sales, costs, and liabilities (Friedman, 1992). It is possible that an internal audit would be a useful tool for managers and stakeholders alike. External audits could verify the information provided. In 1989, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Working Party defined an environmental audit as “a management tool comprising systematic, documented, periodic, and objective evaluations of how well environmental organization, management, and equipment are performing with the aim of helping to safeguard the environment.” The ICC described the auditing process as a mechanism for facilitating management control of environmental practices, assessing compliance with company policies, and meeting regulatory requirements (Eckel and others, 1992). An external audit, combined with public statements of commitment and intent, creates a powerful incentive for corporations to make a considerable investment in their environmental performance. In addition, an external audit formalizes informal practices of self-regulation. Such an auditing scheme allows the public to expect the same information from all companies and sites (Burke and Hill, 1990; Simmons and Wynne, 1993).
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An externally conducted and accredited evaluation is likely to carry more weight with the public than internally constructed and produced self-regulation. The public historically has perceived punitive sanctions as proof that the government takes environmental performance seriously. If companies hope to avoid more regulation and to benefit from non-command-and-control regulation they must be able to convince shareholders that alternative control mechanisms, such as internal audits, policy reformulation and external accreditation, truly work. Informal control mechanisms that are invisible to outsiders will lack credibility to stakeholders regardless of how well they work (Simmons and Wynne, 1993). Failure to disclose information, even data that demonstrates continual improvement, is equated by many stakeholders with a lack of accountability.9 In 1986, the EPA adopted an Environmental Auditing Policy to encourage the adoption of environmental auditing programs. Its stated objective was to help “ensure the adequacy of internal systems to achieve, maintain and monitor compliance . . . [and] establish sound environmental management practices to improve environmental performance” (EPA, 1995). The incentive that EPA provides is a more lenient enforcement response, provided the firm makes a real effort to correct violations and underlying environmental problems in a timely manner. On 31 March 1995, the EPA adopted a new policy on environmental audits which offers significantly reduced penalties and protection from criminal referrals to facilities that voluntarily disclose and correct violations identified through the audits.10 This policy is an attempt to provide the “regulated community [with] predictability and to reward environmentally responsible actions, without unduly limiting vigorous enforcement of . . . environmental laws or the public’s right to know” (EPA, 1995). Private Voluntary Codes of Management In addition to the upcoming ISO 14001, EMAS, and BS 7750, several other voluntary standards have been promoted by U.S. corporations: the Business Charter for Sustainable Development, Global Environmental Management Initiative, Responsible Care, and the CERES Principles. All were created by international business organizations, industry groups, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Their guidelines range from broad, nonbinding agreements to more specific actions that must be reviewed annually in a report and audit. The standards also call for a varying level of public accountability and disclosure of information. Examples of Programs. In April 1991, the International Chamber of Commerce
organized a second World Industry Conference on Environmental Management (WICEM II). At the conference, participants assessed progress that has occurred on environmental issues since the first WICEM and they aimed to create
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momentum for elevating interest in environmental issues (Rappaport and Flaherty, 1992). Industry participants were encouraged to sign ICC’s Business Charter for Sustainable Development. The ICC’s guidelines suggest that companies establish policies, programs and practices for conducting operations in an environmentally sound manner and that “each company’s management should promote among its employees at all levels an individual sense of environmental responsibility and should educate and encourage them to be alert to potential sources of pollution and to sound resource conservation measures within their operations” (Rappaport and Flaherty, 1992, p. 10). The guidelines suggest that firms continuously improve performance, reduce environmental impacts, measure and report compliance, and recognize the environment as a top priority, but they do not require audits or provide a specific format. The Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI), formulated by a group of U.S. multinationals, is designed to stimulate, assemble, and promote worldwide deliberation on matters of environmental management; improve the environmental performance of businesses worldwide through example and leadership; promote a worldwide business ethic for environmental management and sustainable development; enhance the dialogue between business and its interested publics, such as NGOs, governments, and academia; and forge partnerships around the world to encourage similar efforts in other countries (Rappaport and Flaherty, 1992). In 1985, considerable media attention focused on Union Carbide’s second accidental chemical release. The Chemical Manufacturers’ Association (CMA) realized that its proactive involvement in legislation was not enough to prevent chemical accidents and it lost credibility. In 1990, in response to its low ratings, the CMA introduced the Responsible Care program, an environmental management program designed to regain the public’s trust in the aftermath of accidents in Bhopal and elsewhere. The principles of Responsible Care are now embraced by most of the chemical industry worldwide. As a condition of membership in the CMA, companies must pledge to operate according to the Guiding Principles for Responsible Care of Chemicals. The standard is comprised of 11 guidelines that call for a collective improvement in health, safety, and environmental performance. The evaluation of a participating firm’s performance involves the firm reporting, in nonspecific terms, its progress in the implementation of individual management practices. Performance in relation to the codes is not independently validated, and the codes are designed and enforced strictly by the CMA. Yet despite improvements in waste management, safer transportation, and public participation programs spurred by the Responsible Care standard, the chemical industry continues to face low ratings and has been unable to extract itself from a faceless, nameless, corporate power perceived as a part of the big, bad “them.”
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The Canadian National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, Japanese Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) , and petroleum industry associations also have proposed voluntary environmental management codes. The trend in sponsoring voluntary initiatives has been led primarily by forward-thinking business groups. The Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) Principles are the only voluntary codes of management promulgated by a nongovernmental, nonindustry, nonprofit organization. In 1989, CERES developed ten principles for improved environmental management, including requirements for disclosure and internal audits. Unlike industry-sponsored plans, the CERES Principles outline the major corporate environmental responsibilities which then must be reported to CERES, a nonindustry, nonprofit, independent organization comprised of various environmental groups, the investment community, and other at-large organizations. CERES’s distinguishing feature of public accountability includes reporting criteria: CERES requires each endorser to submit an annual environmental report which is intended to provide the public with information not required by law and generally not provided by U.S. companies. CERES claims that by adhering to its principles, a company consistently makes changes in environmental policies and procedures that result in increased environmental sustainability. In addition, the required report, which indicates the progress a company has made in attaining the principles, provides the stakeholders with consistent, comparable, and widely disseminated information, thereby facilitating evaluation of environmental performance. Voluntary codes have been met with both applause and skepticism. Some environmental groups, consumers, government officials and regulators believe the guidelines are only a public relations strategy because signing the guidelines does not necessarily result in improved environmental programs or increase the availability of data. Some stakeholders have expressed concern that the standards are too broad and do not require companies to state the specific environmental policies and programs that they are undertaking. Others have complained that voluntary standards do not require an external audit and that, without such verification, stakeholders cannot be assured that appropriate and necessary management and monitoring systems are in place, functioning, and are integrated into business decision-making, thereby assuring the system’s continual effectiveness. Proponents of voluntary codes of management suggest that the codes provide flexibility and an environment more receptive to investment and capital expenditure in alternative manufacturing practices. They counter that commandand-control regulation hinders environmental programs. They also think that vol-
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untary codes reduce the adversarial relationships between corporations and environmental advocates, thereby promoting collaborative solutions and the exchange of important environmental data.
Corporate Responses to Voluntary Codes Recent research on voluntary codes indicates that environmental groups and corporate participants agree there is a need for more publicly available information; for oversight by a nongovernmental, nonindustry, independent group; and for some direct effort by the environmental community to work with businesses to advance environmental issues.11 In some cases, participants claim that companies that adopt voluntary codes disclose previously unreported information, interact more directly with stakeholders through the collaborative process, and make continual environmental improvements in their operations and management. Although some environmental groups and corporate representatives remain skeptical about the participation in voluntary codes of management carried out by individual firms, research indicates that these groups believe voluntary codes have made an impact beyond the individual firms that participate because they influence public expectations of what constitutes environmentally responsible behavior. The effect on the larger environmental arena can be seen in the actions undertaken by non-participating companies. While many companies were already providing some information in their annual reports and were interacting with stakeholders, voluntary environmental codes have furthered companies’ commitments to reporting and continual improvement. Voluntary codes have provided additional pressure, a process, and organization to which companies have had to react. “In response to the Valdez oil spill and the creation of the CERES Principles, corporate America has adopted progressive environmental principles tailored to the unique circumstances of particular companies. A heightened consciousness of the need to be a responsible steward of the environment has been achieved from the CEO down through the entire corporation. Consequently corporations have begun to think more seriously about the value of corporate environmental reports and disclosure of information” (Smith, 1993, p. 310). Many corporations that did not adopt the CERES Principles developed their own voluntary codes. CMA developed Responsible Care, and the American Petroleum Institute announced a set of environmental principles for its members. Corporations involved in the Business Roundtable established GEMI. The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) formulated a set of Principles for Sustainable Development that was adopted by many international corporations. Although some companies have rejected these voluntary codes, many of those
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companies have instituted elements of the codes—issuing environmental reports, writing their own environmental policies, and creating the position of vice president for environmental affairs without officially adopting them. Increased Collaboration with Environmental Groups The CERES Principles call for a management commitment of “sustain[ing] a process that ensures that the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer are fully informed about pertinent environmental issues and are fully responsible for environmental policy. In selecting our Board of Directors, [endorsers] will consider demonstrated environmental commitment as a factor” (CERES, 1995). The rationale for these requirements is that environmental accountability requires established responsibility and a demonstration of strong upper management commitment to environmental initiatives. Although Exxon initially rejected the idea of appointing an environmental representative to its board, oceanographer John H. Steele became a board member shortly after the Valdez spill. In January 1990, Exxon appointed one of its top executives to the newly created position of vice president for environment and safety (Barnard, 1990). Many companies have since appointed environmentalists to their executive boards, including former EPA administrators William Reilly and William Ruckelshaus (Cahill and Engelman, 1993). According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey (the principal source that is collecting corporate environmental reporting and auditing trends), the recent inclination to appoint environmental representatives to the Boards is due to the government and the general public placing increasing pressure on companies to exercise environmental responsibility. This pressure is evidenced by the increasing number of shareholder proposals on environmental responsibility introduced at annual meetings and the increasing demands for information on companies’ environmental performance. In response, many companies have become proactive in establishing environmental policies and programs and in appointing highlevel oversight within the company to legitimize and enforce their policies and programs (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 1994, p. 29). The PricewaterhouseCoopers survey indicated that the share of companies that has established an environmental affairs oversight function at the board of directors level increased from 14 percent in 1990 to 23 percent in 1992, and it has nearly doubled (to 41 percent) since the 1992 survey. The report states that having someone knowledgeable about the environment at the board level sends a strong message about the importance of achieving the company’s environmental mission (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 1994).
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Many of the companies which have not placed environmental representatives on their boards have created alternative ways of introducing environmental issues to upper-level management. Environmental committees or divisions have become more prevalent within corporations in the United States. As of mid-1992, well over one-third of the Fortune 100 companies had established board level committees for public policy or environment, health, and safety (EHS) matters. Specific companies that have designated an environmental committee of the board include: Amoco, ARCO, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Occidental, Union Carbide, and Hoechst Celanese Corporation (Cahill and Engelman, 1993). In addition, dialogue with environmental groups has become more prevalent. More than 50 company executives have joined the boards of national environmental organizations. For example, several directors of Union Carbide are on the boards of the World Wildlife Fund, World Resources Institute, and the National Resources Defense Council (Cahill and Engelman, 1993). CERES is not directly responsible for the appointment of environmental representatives to the boards of corporations or for the interactive roles corporate executives have played by joining the boards of national environmental organizations. However, CERES was a motivating force in exerting pressure and defining social expectations for a strong upper management commitment to environmental initiatives and for increased environmental-corporate collaboration. To some extent, when CERES defined the commitment of management as a requisite for environmental responsibility, and companies appointed environmental representatives to their board, a norm of environmentally responsible behavior emerged. Reporting Trends In addition to providing momentum for the formulation of voluntary reporting programs and upper-management commitment, voluntary environmental codes have advanced the trends in corporate reporting. Fund managers have reported that more companies are providing EHS data with their annual reports. Although not all companies are adopting voluntary codes, the impact has been to make companies take another look at their practices and improve upon them (Gelfand, 1995). PricewaterhouseCoopers notes the impact of increasing social expectations on reporting trends: “Whether public environmental reporting becomes a requirement for Corporate America is an open question. ISO is likely to consider including public reporting of performance measures. The CERES Principles support reporting of environmental performance, and participation in EMAS
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in Europe also results in a level of public disclosure . . . companies have initiated environmental reporting to proactively satisfy information demands and receive due credit for their significant investments in environmental stewardship” (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 1995, p. 35). Formal Environmental Policies Most of the voluntary codes call for the creation of formal environmental policies. Seventy-three percent of companies with significant environmental liabilities have a formal statement of environmental principles, an overall environmental policy, or an environmental mission statement. In addition, nearly 60 percent of those participants that do not have significant environmental liabilities report having formal statements or policies. PricewaterhouseCoopers believes “this is strong evidence of the seriousness with which corporations are approaching their environmental responsibilities, and presumably their recognition of the potentially adverse social and economic consequences of failing to do so” (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 1994, p. 29). Voluntary Reporting Twenty-five percent of the surveyed companies, or 100 American companies, indicated that they are issuing public reports, although the definition of “public report” was not supplied (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 1994). A 1993 study of European and North American firms indicated that 30 major corporations12 released voluntary environmental progress reports. The study further indicated that each report attempted to address low as well as high points, and provided a discussion of the whole company rather than selected units. The progress reports contain the following: descriptions of specific, successful environmental projects, a mention of the corporate audit program (although the specific facilities evaluated are not yet disclosed), and tables or graphs showing quantitative environmental data that provide company stakeholders with a snapshot of the company’s environmental progress. The most recent environmental reports are often designed for several purposes, including eliciting employee support for company environmental plans, reassuring host communities that local facilities are not hazardous, impressing shareholders that the company will not be hurt by environmental risks, and convincing environmentalists that companies are making environmental progress [Naimon, 1994].
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Auditing An environmental audit highlights a company’s environmental problems, and determines how these impact the business and what actions must be taken: “Many businesses have found that the environmental audit has contributed to major savings through waste reduction, increased energy efficiency and improvements in the use of plant, machinery and vehicles. [An audit] ensures that the company is in full possession of all the facts on potential risks . . . [and is able to] comply with numerous environmental laws. Environmental auditing should be a continuous proactive process. No company should wait until it is involved in some form of wrong-doing” (Wicks, 1992, p. 105). “According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers’ survey, 60 percent of respondents perform quarterly environmental reviews, up from 52 percent in 1992. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that the percentage of reviews completed in response to significant developments alone (e.g., something was wrong) have decreased by more than half since 1992. This indicates that companies are beginning to realize the benefits of proactive environmental auditing” (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 1994). More indicative of the growing recognition of an audit’s importance was that 73 percent of companies had auditing programs in 1994, a significant increase from the 40 percent in 1992. More than 95 percent report that management awareness has improved as a result of these audit programs (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 1994). Almost two thirds of those companies now performing environmental audits indicated that they would expand their programs if penalties were eliminated for violations that they themselves identify, report, and correct (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 1994). The issue is not one of convincing companies they need audits, but of convincing them that they should disclose the information the audits provide. The new EPA environmental auditing guidelines might eliminate companies’ hesitancy to disclose violations identified through the audits. Many forces determine the level of resources that a company will devote to reporting and the extent of its disclosure. Recently, companies have committed to a greater level of formal environmental policies, reporting, and auditing. Voluntary environmental codes actively promote these components of environmental responsibility and are part of the external pressure that companies must face as they try to conform to increasing external pressures and changing environmental norms. Several voluntary environmental codes advocate these activities and press the limits to determine the extent and type of information a company should disclose, as well as the behavior that constitutes environmentally legitimate corporate behavior.
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Policy Implications The extent to which these companies can influence future policy through their interactions with voluntary codes is not clear at this point. The CERES Principles have been introduced as state legislation in New Jersey. The United Nations used the Valdez Principles in the design of its sustainable development guidelines for multinational corporations (Doyle, 1990). Pressure from socially responsible investors resulted in state and local government placing social screens around their investments and government contracts. At least 10 states have passed legislation on voluntary audits, and the EPA recently changed its guidelines regarding auditing to promote more disclosure (Hanson, 1995). Companies are also aware that because auditing and disclosure are becoming more common legislative issues, as well as the norm for environmental responsibility, involvement with voluntary codes offers some companies a means to explore—and possibly shape—policy in an open dialogue.
Conclusions As public expectations of corporations have risen, definitions of social responsibility have evolved also. In the past, attempts to influence corporate activity to match the concepts of social responsibility generally have included command-and-control regulation and market-forced regulation. However, environmental regulations have recently come under scrutiny for being economically inefficient and stifling to innovation. Nonregulatory codes of environmental management have thus emerged as an alternative mechanism for influencing corporate behavior. Codes such as the CERES Principles, GEMI, Responsible Care, and the Business Charter for Sustainable Development utilize self-regulation and internal corporate pressure to manage environmental impacts. Such programs have emerged throughout Europe and in the United States. In the United States, voluntary mechanisms to influence corporate behavior have manifested themselves in EPA voluntary auditing programs and industry- and business-sponsored environmental principles. Controlling corporate behavior from outside the firm via voluntary environmental codes of management is a significant divergence from traditional regulatory attempts. Voluntary codes are nonregulatory and rely on market and social pressures to create de facto regulation of corporate activity, while also promoting accountability through the disclosure of information. Research shows that corporations that endorse certain voluntary codes gain some environmental legitimacy and credibility from stakeholders because they respond to changing social norms. Environmental groups view more favorably those companies that attempt to continuously improve their management and production techniques while disclosing more information. At the same time, they are
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skeptical that the high impact industries participating in voluntary codes can alter their practices enough to conform to rising expectations for corporate environmental performance. Research indicates that voluntary environmental codes are helping to define the practical components for corporate accountability through reporting and disclosure requirements. These codes have helped to shape expectations regarding high-level management commitment, components of public reports, and elements of an audit. Although many companies have yet to adopt the voluntary codes, a number of these have adopted many of the environmental actions that the codes advocate. Thus, the level of legitimacy a firm gains by adopting the voluntary codes may be less visible than the influence these codes have had in impacting society’s expectations for corporate environmental responsibility.
Notes 1. As Bruce Babbitt stated in The Future Environmental Agenda for the United States, “The victories we have won in such areas as air and water pollution and natural area protection will, in hindsight, seem relatively easy. The next generation of environmental challenges will be more intractable, more difficult problems that fundamentally relate to how we live on the land and on the planet . . . [I]n the next generation, we will have . . . [to look] at how we run an industrial society, and at how to make the kinds of changes in the structure of this society, in the organization of our economy and our culture, and in our personal habits, to avoid the possibility of environmental catastrophe” (Orts, 1995). 2. The word voluntary indicates that the criteria are not legislated but are adopted by corporations. 3. Voluntary standards can provide a competitive edge for companies facing pressure from stakeholders’ companies for quality products and services within the context of excellence in environmental management. 4. Since its issuance in 1987, ISO 9000 has gained rapid acceptance and is a de facto requirement for doing business. Over 40,000 companies have been certified worldwide, although ISO 9000 certification is not as widespread (about 10 percent) in the United States (Orts, 1995). 5. ISO 9000 certification requires documentation that the product meets certain quality standards, extends assurance to all inputs in a product, and requires suppliers of the products to meet the standards as well. The power of the standards derives not from the specific practices they require, but from the management structure that a firm must set in place and document. The process by which a product is deemed ISO 9000 qualified includes annual accreditation by a third-party, certified auditor. 6. U.S. businesses are currently seeking to comply with ISO 9000 because of real or perceived market forces: customers in Europe demand ISO 9000 registration in contracts; ISO 9000 registered suppliers receive preferential treatment; if a company is not accredited, its competitors have the advantage of product differentiation by being registered; and European divisions already have registration and are putting pressure on U.S. branches or subsidiary companies for internal consistency.
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7. It is likely that market and social forces will make EMAS mandatory. Representatives of European banks and insurance companies might soon require businesses that need loan or insurance extensions to participate in the EMAS because loans and insurance policies often involve environmental risks. In addition, the European Parliament might make EMAS participation an eligibility requirement for any company seeking government contracts or involvement in any community program (Orts, 1995). 8. Of the 600 large companies EPA solicited for participation (which were identified by amounts of emissions reported) fewer than 300 volunteered, and an even smaller number of companies affirmed their commitments with quantified data. The EPA then invited several thousand more corporations to participate. However, fewer than 500 more companies signed on, with only half of these supplying quantified data. As of March 1994, EPA had invited more than 8000 companies; 1200 have agreed to participate. 9. The belief that companies are hiding information is not that far-fetched considering the information typically provided to stakeholders. A 1992 survey found that 80 percent of corporate respondents conduct environmental auditing; yet only six percent release summaries to shareholders, and then only on special request. 10. If most of the seven conditions that firms must fulfill under the EPA’s new environmental auditing and self-disclosure program are met, fines might be reduced by up to 75 percent. EPA can still demand payment of a fine assessed on the economic benefit derived from noncompliance. The seven conditions that must be met are 1. The violation must be discovered to have been voluntary. 2. Disclosure of the violation must be immediate and voluntar., 3. The violation must be corrected within 60 days, unless it can be demonstrated that more time is needed to complete the correction. 4. Any violation creating an imminent danger must be remedied immediately. 5. The firm must implement measures to prevent recurrence of the violation and to correct any environmental harm that it has created. 6. The violation must not be the result of a firm’s failure to correct a violation it knew about and took no measures to prevent. 7. The firm must cooperate fully with EPA and provide all requested documents and access to employees for any future investigation (C&EN, 1995, p. 6). 11. Many environmentalists believe that businesses are key groups to target in an effort to improve environmental practices. Mainstream environmental groups believe that they must work with companies, and include them in dialogue if real improvements are to occur. Some radical advocacy environmental groups disagree entirely with corporate-environmental interaction and prefer to see companies remain outside discussions. They prefer that companies be regulated, and object to the collaborative and nonregulatory process required by voluntary codes of management, including CERES. 12. Companies issuing reports range from large multinational corporations such as AT&T, British Petroleum, DuPont, ICI, and Monsanto, to medium-sized companies such as Noranda Minerals in Canada, Dutch BSO/Origins, Swissair, and The Body Shop in the United Kingdom. In addition, many corporations such as Amoco, Northern Telecom, and Procter & Gamble are in the process of publishing consolidated environmental progress reports (Naimon, 1994).
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Y CHAPTER FIVE
SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS IN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL NEGOTIATIONS Laurent Renevier and Mark Henderson
cience and scientists are at the core of environmental negotiations. While the history of international negotiation has been driven by the politically determined interests of nation-states, efforts to protect the global environment confront more complex and uncertain cause-and-effect relationships. In environmental negotiations, the participants’ interests and options are not easily defined without the assistance of specialists who can interpret these causal chains. Because of their dependence on scientific developments, negotiations may never be completely settled. As old patterns of thought prove untenable in light of new scientific data and refined analyses, negotiators and their governments must demonstrate the capacity to learn: to internalize new ways of thinking about environmental problems (Mann, 1991). This chapter highlights some problems with the current interaction between science and politics in environmental negotiations, and suggests changes to the negotiating system. Our proposals challenge many of the assumptions about the proper role of science in politics, and of politics in science. It is our hope that by engaging in the debate about these roles the international environmental community will help bring about faster, more equitable agreements, promote positive learning on the part of world leaders, and in turn prove more successful in protecting the global environment.
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The Problem Two major problems hinder the progress of environmental learning in multilateral negotiations. One problem is the maldistribution of scientific capabilities. Experts from a handful of countries dominate environmental sciences. Less developed countries (LDCs) especially lack the capability to make independent analyses of environmental problems and proposed solutions. Governmental environmental policymaking may be poorly informed and overwhelmingly influenced by immediate political interests, or too accepting of scientific prescriptions without independent evaluation. Since scientific capabilities are essential to implementation as well as negotiation of environmental policies, states that lack these capabilities may be unable to meet their obligations. The second problem is that science is widely misperceived to be immune to politics. The scientist’s role in policymaking is often based on an assumption that science can serve as an objective and impartial arbiter of social conflict (Proctor, 1991, p. 8). In fact, science—much like politics—reflects the biases of its practitioners’ institutional, disciplinary, and personal interests. When the bias remains hidden, it creates unrealistic expectations of neutrality on the part of scientists and can lead political leaders to abdicate their responsibilities as guardians of the public interest. When such bias is perceived, it generates distrust among policymakers and damages the credibility of science as a whole. As the Salzburg Initiative (IENN, 1992, p. 6) puts it, the challenge is to promote a better balance between science and politics. Such a balance would promote structures for scientific analysis in state policymaking processes and in international regimes that incorporate mechanisms for learning as new data and analytical models warrant. In particular, it would build the capabilities of LDCs to evaluate the scientific analyses that propel environmental negotiation. It would reinforce the integrity of science first, by making explicit its sources of bias and second, by fostering true objectivity through opening channels for reassessment and verification. This chapter will first describe the special characteristics of science and scientists in international environmental negotiations. Recognizing that multilateral negotiations are a two-level game, we then examine the interaction of science with policy formulation and negotiation at the international and domestic levels. Finally, we present our own proposals for improving the current state of affairs, starting with incremental, conceptual, and structural changes, and concluding with a description of a new regime for environmental science within the bounds of international environmental politics.
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Science and Politics Science and politics are uneasy partners in the effort to protect the global environment. The mechanisms that govern international politics today evolved from the historical circumstances of the European nation-states, which developed the customs of treaty negotiations to meet the problems of war and peace within their own peculiar political context. The conventions of modern science also developed in Europe but with different influences. While the treaty system developed to resolve conflicts among political actors, early modern scientific practitioners sought to avoid conflict with the political and religious authorities, especially over the moral issues that arose from their work. They promoted the idea that science should remain amoral and objective in order to gain autonomy from church and state (Proctor, 1991, p. 7). This cloak of objectivity earned science and scientists a unique place in Western society, supplanting the magic and great tribal wizards of premodern societies as “holders of the truth.” As Barry Barnes and David Edge (1990, p. 50) write, “in modern societies, science is near to being the source of cognitive authority: anyone who would be widely believed and trusted as an interpreter of nature needs a license from the scientific community.” However, this view obscures the heterogeneity of science as practiced today, instead depicting scientists as constituting a monolithic bloc whose interests and methods do not differ the world over. Communities of scientists who share specific operational models for organizing information do exist, but as Peter Haas (1990) points out, the conditions for forming such “epistemic communities” are exceptional. Political leaders, then, have come to rely on the objective advice of scientific experts when the problems they face are complex or characterized by uncertainty. Nowhere is this more clear than in issues of environmental protection. Scientists have to be trusted because many environmental threats are beyond the immediate experience of the public. Whether or not stratospheric ozone depletion increases the risk of contracting cancer is an issue that can only be determined by scientists, not by the public or by politicians. Because of the growing complexity of the relationship between humankind and its environment, scientists have to investigate well beyond belching smokestacks to find the roots of most environmental issues. Increasingly, scientists have to engage in expensive, time-consuming research and elaborate modeling to predict the effects of environmental degradation. Scientists in Environmental Negotiations Scientists intervene at four points in the process of environmental negotiation. First, they may identify problems, either through empirical data or through predictive
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conjecture. Second, scientists may focus attention of the public and political leaders on environmental issues and convey specific understandings of a problem, influencing societal learning about environmental issues. In doing so, they influence policy formulation in their own countries and may contribute to international consensus on the matter. A third point of intervention is the political actors’ use of scientific advice to provide specific policy options once a problem has been placed on the agenda, including analyses of potential costs and benefits of different policy options. Fourth, scientists monitor progress made in combating the problems, providing and analyzing new data to evaluate the measures taken. Additional data may suggest new and different ways of thinking about the problems and return to the second point of intervention—a cycle of learning (see Figure 5.1). Despite the tremendous scientific resources that are expended upon research of potential environmental threats, scientists have come to recognize that the phenomena which they study are so complex and so abstruse that they either cannot be comprehended or that they at least necessitate further research. Haas, Williams, and Babai (1977, p. 227) note that “knowledge is not the sole key to political agreement, and the sharing of knowledge among disciplines has not produced an evenly overarching consensus on ecological wholeness even among scientists.” Nevertheless, they conclude that “science has heavily influenced the means considered appropriate for action.” FIGURE 5.1. POINTS OF INTERVENTION BY SCIENTISTS INTO THE INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL NEGOTIATION PROCESS • Identify Problems
• Focus Attention & Ways of Thinking about Problems Influence Domestic Policy Formulation Resolve International Uncertainty • Predict Possible Outcomes Provide Decision-Makers with Policy Options, Costs and Benefits • Monitor Progress New Data to Evaluate Measures Taken New Analyses to Suggest Different Ways of Thinking about Problems
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The temptation is often great to fill the gaps in science with politically expedient policies, blurring the line between politics and science. Some astute negotiators will typically strive to turn or interpret available scientific data in a way that is congruent with their interests.1 On the other side of the issue, concepts at the very core of the reasoning put forth by some environmentalists do not all have scientific blessing. For example, the concept of sustainable yield is far from being a generally accepted tenet. Scientists in various disciplines are still grappling with the notion that there might exist some sustainable level of exploitation of natural resources even though these same notions have taken center stage in most natural resources regimes over the last few years. While many environmentalists tend to take the concept as an accepted given, scientists are nowhere close to an agreement on what constitutes a sustainable yield (Stevens, 1993). Some conservative analysts point to the lack of consensus among scientists as evidence to refute the need for the adoption of response strategies to environmental degradation.2 Scientists themselves have voiced concern that the current efforts to curb some emissions are unsupported by scientific evidence. In the case of global climate change, for instance, a group of scientists signed a statement in which they admitted feeling “disturbed that activists, anxious to stop energy and economic growth, are pushing ahead with drastic policies without taking notice of recent changes in the underlying science” (The New American, June 1, 1992, p. 9). The weakness of scientific knowledge in the face of complex ecological problems has led others to advocate a new humility of humankind towards its environment (Stairs and Taylor, 1992, p. 124). This school of thought is not a renunciation of science but rather a recognition that even the most elaborate means are insufficient in understanding the phenomena at hand. This view also questions the applicability of most scientific research to the natural world. The criticism is chiefly aimed at laboratory science and at the shortcomings of even the most refined computer models.3 More disquieting is the suggestion that even if scientists were in a position to determine accurately some optimal (that is, sustainable) level of economic exploitation, scientific advice would certainly go unheeded because short-term economic aggrandizement would take precedence. Recent progress in sciencedriven environmental negotiation does not yet make this cynical view unwarranted. However, defending the long-term interests of society remains the responsibility of world leaders, not of scientists alone. Science and Levels of Development Our discussion so far has concentrated on the capital-intensive, technology-driven hard science that has developed in the West. The conceptualization of
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environmental science and research, however, varies with culture and level of development of a particular society. One could make a convincing argument that softer approaches to environmental problems are more appropriate to the understanding of some development-related issues. This logic recognizes, for instance, that the folklore accumulated by indigenous tribes about their surroundings may tell more about the natural world than the most sophisticated supercomputer models. Western scientists have been slow to incorporate such soft science. Softer approaches may not be easily codified into convenient equations or expressed in a consistent or value-free format that can be compared and analyzed the world over. This schism between modern and traditional science also contributes to the broader misunderstandings that exist between developed and developing countries on the role of science as the major engine of social progress. Therefore, in addition to the quantitative disparities in scientific capacities between the industrialized nations and the developing world, there may exist a qualitative gap. Bridging this gap would not only require bringing additional Western-trained scientists into the ranks of the developing countries’ scientific contingent, but also introducing the indigenous expertise and traditional ways of knowing into the practices of Western science. The nascent global regime on the sustainable use of biological resources is a useful illustration. Unlike other international regimes dealing with the preservation of the global environment, the Convention on Biodiversity acknowledges the importance of traditional repositories of knowledge such as indigenous people, although it fails to make it a full-fledged provision of the treaty. The Preamble to the Convention includes a statement which reads “recognizing the close and traditional dependence of many indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles on biological resources, and the desirability of sharing equitably benefits arising from [their] use . . .” Corporations and research institutes in developed countries are also increasingly resorting to indigenous knowledge as a basis for species prospection and conservation efforts.4 The most obvious consequence of the enormous disparities in scientific capacities that exist among various countries is that it generates distrust on the part of those who do not participate in—or feel they had been excluded from— the elaboration of the scientific basis for environmental policy. This is especially so at the outset of the research process. Unless other countries have had the opportunity by some means to participate in the research and feel confident that they have been able to corroborate the scientific process, the outcome is likely to foster suspicion. Thus, not only is it important to obtain cogent scientific data, it is also highly relevant at the international level to determine a mutually agreed mechanism
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for the collection of data. Otherwise, pertinent information is likely to be of limited use because of the skepticism that might plague the discussion. One might argue that this amounts to procedure taking precedence over substance. However, from a pragmatic point of view, misgivings about the veracity of the figures, conclusions, and methods can sometimes shift the focus so far from the substance that it becomes practically irrelevant. Conversely, less-than-perfect science can be the basis for an agreement precisely because of the same need to take political considerations into account. For example, in the case of the protection of the North and Baltic Seas, the relative similarity in the scientific capacities of the riparian nations did not prompt negotiators to distrust scientific reports (Haas, 1993, p. 149). However, the science underlying the Mediterranean Action Plan (Med Plan) and its protocols was far more contentious. According to the testimony of some participating scientists, the quality of the program was suboptimal in its achievement because the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) insisted on the participation of scientists and laboratories from the region’s less developed countries. For economic and scientific efficiency the bulk of the work could have been contracted out to the most advanced facilities in the region (that is, in France). This option, however, would have been politically unacceptable for many countries whose people would have seen this as giving France a de facto monopoly in the knowledge underlying the environmental problems of the Mediterranean (Haas, 1990, p. 80).
Science and International Politics Global science is far from homogenous. Scientists have divergent interests and work to fulfill distinct agendas and achievements. Scientists strive to reflect more closely the patterns of nature in their models, but the variables they select to incorporate in models are, in part, a function of their national, institutional, disciplinary, and class affiliations. Scientific research is also, consciously or unconsciously, altered by personal convictions and experiences. Peter Haas (1990, p. 52) highlights the importance of personal beliefs in scientific, and particularly, environmental research. He points out that “reality is not directly accessible, and our interpretation of events is processed through filters, including those of prior experience and expectations. Thus, responses to environmental change may have little to do with objective factors.”5 The body of scientists is generally divided between those who engage in fundamental research and those who engage in applied science. Among the latter, some are focusing their work on the development of environmental technologies. At the other end of the spectrum, pure environmental scientists study
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the fundamental mechanisms of natural cycles. They can further be divided between those who discover and analyze environmental problems and those who come up with models designed to predict outcomes of given courses of action. Differences in Scientific Capacity Scientific capacities are unevenly distributed throughout the world. The bulk of the science that supports environmental issues originates in the industrialized countries of the North. In some instances, research has typically been dominated by a handful of countries. For example, during the negotiations that led up to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the follow-up protocols, the United States was far ahead of all others in its leadership in stratospheric sciences. In part because of their colossal budgetary endowments, various U.S. scientific research programs were able to benefit from the most advanced facilities and to attract the most qualified experts in the world. Not surprisingly, the literature produced by American institutes and universities tended to eclipse all the research that was taking place elsewhere in the world. The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) even managed to entice some eminent scientists from Europe to conduct research in its laboratories. European stratospheric science, in contrast, suffered from underfunding and lack of interest (Benedick, 1991, pp. 29–30). Some southern countries have built endogenous scientific capacities of their own. However, their performance typically does not measure up to those of similar institutions in the North. For one thing, funding is not as forthcoming as in the industrialized nations. Furthermore, environmental issues are not the field of research that generate the most interest, in the face of development priorities that are (rightly or wrongly) perceived as being more pressing. Some analysts argue that even when their scientists are present, their interests may not be represented because the majority of these experts have been trained in the North. Such analyses view the concentration of scientific expertise as another means through which the North can shape the international agenda at the expense of the countries of the South.6 Although formally taking part in the negotiations of many international environmental regimes, developing countries often have a hard time keeping up with the science that is used as the basis for action. The International Whaling Commission, for instance, is open for membership to any state. Yet, for lack of scientific wherewithal, the smaller, resource-poor nations have to either acquiesce with the scientific arguments emanating from the more advanced participants or reject the Commission’s proposals outright (Peterson, 1992, p. 156). In either case, the position of the developing world is more likely to hinge on immediate political considerations than on rationally formulated science. The
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paucity of scientific evidence originating in the developing countries can thus compel these countries to resort to arguments that are comparatively more politically laden than those brought forward by the industrialized nations. Some international regimes provide for administrative mechanisms that seek to remedy the imbalance between scientific capacities by simply assigning in-house experts to supplement the negotiating teams of the poorer nations. Ultimately, this scheme is bound to succumb to the same forces as these nations become wary of the motives and the influence of foreign scientists, foreign institutions, and even national scientists who have been trained in industrialized countries.
Scientific Data as a Political Artifact The acceptability of scientific data, whatever the sophistication of the measurement equipment with which it has been collected, is by and large dependent on political factors. The concern that data has to be trusted (both politically and for scientific accuracy) in order to be an effective input into the negotiating process is a recurring theme. One should only recall the Concorde aircraft controversy to grasp the significance of suspicion in the international environmental debate. The Concorde polemic was sparked in the early 1970s by the publication of the findings of a team of American scientists on the potential pernicious effect of CFCs on the stratospheric ozone layer. In the eyes of the British and the French, American concerns for the ozone layer constituted a plot to undermine their joint supersonic jet program (Benedick, 1991, p. 32).7 Distrust is more likely to emerge when science and negotiations ensuing from scientific evidence threaten to undermine a policy or a technology deemed as vital for a state’s national interest. Nuclear technologies are a case in point. During the negotiations of the Paris Commission on the reduction of pollution affecting the North Sea, France systematically rejected proposals to limit emissions of radioactive waste from reprocessing plants or discharges from regular nuclear plants (Saetevik, 1988, p. 76). During the negotiation of the Med Plan, and its follow-up protocols, the French scientific delegates were unwilling to disclose data on emissions of radioactive substances for fear that France would be isolated as the sole source of those substances. However, France did not prevent radionuclides from being eventually covered by the Med Plan (Haas, 1990, p. 180). Nuclear energy remains a source of conflict over environment-related science and national interest as some countries, particularly in Asia, hurry to develop nuclear power to fuel their industrialization while much of the developed world is edging away from nuclear power on environmental and safety grounds.
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Distrust is even more acute in negotiations between countries that have different levels of economic and technological achievements. The Med Plan negotiations provide yet another example. On one side were the developed nations of the north shore with their detailed heavy-metals pollution reduction agendas. On the southern shore of the Mediterranean, developing states had different objectives and different approaches, mainly linked to the lack of adequate amenities (such as sewerage systems) and to economic development in general. Therefore, depending on what state they represented, scientists tended to emphasize certain aspects of the pollution problem while ignoring the other dimensions. As Susskind and Ozawa (1992, p. 160) point out, international data—when properly collected and exposed (that is, under collectively agreed terms)—is more credible than research which has been generated nationally. Vested Interests: Political and Scientific Transboundary environmental issues require an especially holistic approach—that is, ecosystem-wide, multidisciplinary, and multimedia. For example, some scientists who took part in the development of the Med Plan sought—not always successfully—to tackle the issue from a more holistic, ecosystem-wide perspective. However, this is not what many national governments desired. Topping the political agenda of most national governments in the region, was the narrow problem of local pollution (Haas, 1990, p. 68). Clearly, the national interests were at variance with what good science dictated. Yet, national interests were not the only hurdles to the holistic approach; scientific interests had the same effect. All too frequently, scientists study a particular problem only from within the narrow confines of their own disciplines. For example, chemists contributing to research on stratospheric ozone depletion predictably focused on atmospheric reactions, which is their own area of expertise. Physicists, on the other hand, were more interested in the dynamics of the stratosphere (Haas, 1990, p. 192). Similarly, different disciplinary backgrounds led to various interests and approaches during the Med Plan negotiation. Marine biologists emphasized the effect of pollutants on fisheries yield while marine chemists focused on traces of heavy metals. In spite of their acknowledgment that the study of the Mediterranean’s ailments required a holistic approach, scientists were concerned with the recognition of their discipline as central to the research program. Indeed, scientists have an immediate interest in the development of their field of research, as it is not advantageous that their field of expertise be declared an area in which little research is needed. Therefore, scientists tend to push for additional studies even when further research may be of little value.
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At this point it becomes necessary to discuss the efficiency dimension of science. It is not at all certain that the allocation of funds for scientific studies should be entrusted to scientists themselves, since they have a vested interest in the continuation of funding for their respective disciplines. The end result might be to allocate funds to the most influential experts rather than to the areas where they would yield the highest marginal returns. Stairs and Taylor (1992) make a cogent argument that scientists may have been the most formidable, insidious obstacles to the enactment of strong prohibitions of marine dumping. According to their analysis: “the strongest defenders in the pro-dumping lobby have been not government regulators or industrialists intent on cheap options, but marine scientists with a lifelong record of involvement in dumping programs. These scientists have used the aura of scientific complexity and objective decision-making to further their own interests” (p. 122–3). Scientists also have an interest in preserving the credibility of their particular fields and research programs. Typically they will be wary of releasing findings that mark a radical departure from established theories. Before they do so, results will be counter-checked and peer-reviewed several times for possible errors. This was the case when the British Antarctic Survey was monitoring what they thought was a thinning of the ozone layer in the mid 1980s; the loss in stratospheric ozone which the British team recorded seemed excessively high (Haas, Keohane and Levy, 1993, p. 31). Only after findings had been checked against measurements from another source were the results officially released. Data from orbiting NASA satellites were subjected to the same suspicious treatment as they corroborated the most alarming theories on the depletion of the earth’s ozone layer. Likewise, scientists are often perturbed about the manner in which their work is related in the popular press. They are all the more wary of releasing their tentative findings since they are concerned that these might be misinterpreted or distorted. This caution is not only dictated by an urge for scientific accuracy on the part of researchers but also by a fear that their jobs and funding might be threatened by impolitic announcements (Bormann and Kelbert, 1986, p. 146). The science behind international environmental issues is distorted first, through the lens of diplomatic power bargaining, and second through the scientists’ own agenda, interests, and training. Self-interested conservatism in releasing data by individual scientists limits participation in science and may hold back international progress on environmental protection. But there may be inherent advantages to the participation of competing social biases in science. Contending political perspectives may inspire better, more complete science at the international level.
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Science and Domestic Politics Just as international negotiators draw on scientific expertise to help define the structure and terms of environmental treaties, scientists are called upon to assist their national governments in formulating national negotiating positions. In neither, though, can scientists be seen as passively dispensing knowledge upon request to national leaders. The biases described in the preceding section are equally prevalent in domestic policy processes. National scientists affect domestic policy formulation through their interactions with international science in four ways. First, international recognition of individual scientists may often reinforce their domestic prestige and, therefore, the respect accorded to their advice by policymakers. Participation in international conferences or receipt of notable research grants serves to draw governmental attention to their work. Particularly in the case of the developing countries, individual scientists’ successes may be seen as symbolic of the nation’s progress in scientific and technological development. When scientists are consulted on policy matters, prestige bolsters the authoritative nature of their advice and makes it more difficult for the government to reject their expert prescriptions. Second, groups of scientists within the policymaking apparatus may form a constituency for perpetuating or expanding policy initiatives related to their area of expertise ( Johnston, 1987). The existence of a domestic community of scientific experts on a given issue may reinforce the internal importance afforded to said issue. Decision makers’ limited attention can thus be drawn to one issue while others are pushed aside. A third point concerns the development of shared ways of knowing across national borders: domestic scientists may become part of an international epistemic community of professionals who share a body of knowledge and a common interpretive framework. Thus, scientists from different nations who share membership in such a community will direct their governments towards the formulation of convergent policy positions. As Peter Haas (1990) documents in his study of the Mediterranean Plan negotiations, such an epistemic community “is a professional group that believes in the same cause-and-effect relationships, truth tests to assess them, and shares common values. . . . Presented with incomplete or ambiguous evidence, members of an epistemic community would draw similar interpretations and make similar policy conclusions” (p. 55). A final point is that nations that have developed domestic scientific and technical expertise will be better positioned to implement technical measures specified in international agreements. Thus, the scientist’s role continues beyond policy advice and the formulation of national negotiating positions to the responsibility for
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implementing decisions. This is another issue of particular relevance to the developing countries: nations that lack domestic expertise may be reluctant to rely on foreign sources for technical information during negotiations and even more concerned about dependence on foreign technology and expertise in implementation.
Developing Science in China China, as a leading exponent of Southern concerns and a potentially crucial player in any global environmental solutions, is an important example of a developing country facing the challenges of participation in international environmental negotiations. In the last century, late imperial China struggled to incorporate elements of Western science without compromising its own scientific and cultural traditions. Paralleling the experience of other developing countries that achieved political independence in this century, China first found it difficult to achieve independence in the economic or technical spheres, in part due to the dearth of domestic expertise. But as it developed indigenous expertise and promoted scientific exchange over the past fifteen years, China has moved to become an active player in environmental science and multilateral negotiations. After the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, development plans relied heavily on citizens who had studied abroad, particularly in France, Japan, and the United States. China also sought direct foreign assistance to launch its reconstruction program and turned to the Soviet Union, which responded by sending scientists and technicians while inviting Chinese workers and students to its scientific and engineering institutes. Like other Third World recipients of superpower aid in the post-World War II era, China found that its dependence on foreign assistance limited its newfound independence. The influx of foreign aid pressured the Chinese Communists to invest increasingly in Soviet-style heavy industry at the expense of their agricultural sector, previously the source of their greatest successes.8 The Chinese Communists eventually repudiated the Soviet model and with it the role of elite scientific experts in policymaking. With a few exceptions, science in China stagnated as the Communist leadership sought an alternative approach to development in the 1960s and 1970s. A generation later, the Chinese leadership’s perspective on the role of science and scientists in policymaking again is characterized by a heavy reliance on scientific expertise in policy formulation, but tempered by a lingering mistrust of foreign influence or control. This perspective is shared by leaders of other developing countries wrestling with the challenges of global environmental protection in which progress has often been driven by scientific developments, usually by scientists from developed countries. Representatives of developing countries
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(the South) such as China have complained that current environmental forecasts and prescriptions are “neocolonial” in nature, that is forecasts of environmental problems are based on science from developed nations while proposals to bring these problems under control are often seen as requiring economic sacrifice by the developing world. At stake is the ability of Southern nations to negotiate and implement environmental accords. Under these conditions, how has China, as a representative of the South, moved to enter the arena of international environmental negotiation? The Chinese government has in fact made notable progress in its environmental efforts since the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE), becoming an active participant in the scientific and diplomatic aspects of global environmental protection. The evolution of Chinese environmental foreign policy suggests that interactions with international science have indeed affected the domestic importance of environmental issues, the reliance of policymakers on scientific experts, the shape of policies that emerged, and the level of success in implementation (Henderson, 1994). China’s environmental initiatives, both domestic and foreign, can generally be traced to the country’s participation at the 1972 conference. UNCHE drew the attention of Chinese leaders to the importance of environmental issues.9 UNEP showered its special attention on existing environmental projects within China and sponsored high-level visits to Beijing, even presenting Li Peng (chair of the toplevel environmental commission and later China’s premier) with an environmental gold medal. The official Chinese press covered U.N.-sponsored inspection tours of these projects in detail, implying that top leaders responded favorably to this source of international prestige. Domestic developments promoted the development of a community of scientists and policymakers with a shared concern for environmental issues. As Chinese scientists interacted with their colleagues abroad, they were exposed to the network of international environmental scientists. Exchanges of technical staff with the United States, Japan, and Western Europe blossomed after 1978. By the beginning of the 1990s, China had developed the scientific capacity to corroborate and expand upon Western environmental science (through, for example, its own ozone layer monitoring facilities) and, in illustration of South-South cooperation, was making plans to launch climate change monitoring satellites with Brazil. The rapid development of Chinese science to world levels served both to boost the credibility of China’s statements on global environmental issues and to foster optimism about the prospects for improving China’s own environmental situation. The record of international negotiations suggests that, at least during the 1980s, the development of Chinese science did help push the government
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towards convergent policies on global environmental issues. After decades of indifference towards international law, China signed onto practically every existing environmental treaty in the first half of the 1980s; it also became one of the developing world’s most active participants in negotiations on ozone and climate change. While the Chinese government as a whole has resisted restrictions on economic development in these talks, China’s environmental specialists have been a strong voice within the government for more progressive action. One scientist representing China at the Montreal Protocol talks publicly promised to “do his personal best” to secure approval from Beijing (Benedick, 1991, p. 75). Perhaps more importantly, China’s environmental bureaucracy has continued to develop and implement environmental protection measures even before the foreign ministry has acceded to specific treaties. China provides one example of a developing country that has gained the capacity to assess and corroborate environmental science on its own terms, enabling its political officials to effectively represent their national interests in international negotiations, and pushing forward with technical measures to promote environmental protection. By examining the conditions that made this possible, what suggestions can we make that will promote the development of this capacity in other countries? The following section details some conceptual and procedural changes to facilitate a better balance of science and politics in negotiations that involve both North and South.
Toward a Better Balance Between Science and Politics The call for “a better balance between science and politics” is made in the Salzburg Initiative (IENN, 1992, p. 6), a package of ten strategies for “improving the effectiveness of international environmental negotiation.”10 The sixth recommendation of the initiative reads: “The integrity of scientific and technical analysis is undermined when it is used to justify politically expedient views.” Although the interpretation of data always reflects political biases (and the priorities of elected officials who bear the final responsibility for reconciling contradictory claims), forecasts and models must be credible. Contingent agreements are the key to dealing with technical uncertainty surrounding many environmental issues. Such agreements can be based on alternative courses of actions and then continuously monitored. The goal of international environmental negotiation is to promote improved protection of the global environment through more equitable and feasible agreements. Since environmental negotiation is clearly science-driven, the target for change must be the conceptual and procedural structures of international
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environmental science. In this section we present three prescriptions for improving the current state of affairs at both the domestic and international levels: a conceptual change to set the stage for a better balance of science and politics; an incremental approach to diversifying environmental science; and a new framework for environmental science within the bounds of international politics. Progress in environmental protection will not require the separation of science and politics; it would be futile to try this. Instead, what is needed is the synergistic interaction of the two. Continuing feedback from one to the other can form the basis of environmental learning—reformation of the ways of knowing about humanity’s place within the natural environment. A Statement on the Role of Science in Politics The first step in the reform of the scientific contribution to international environmental negotiation should consist of a clear statement of intent on the part of the international community on the need to subordinate science to politics. Rather than aiming to create neutral scientific advisory panels, we propose establishing standards of acceptability that reflect political realities as well as scientific principles. The objective should be to force the scientific process from the periphery to the center of the negotiation where it can adequately and visibly be observed by every participant at every stage of the environmental treaty-making process. Transparency and acknowledgment of uncertainty would be key components of this statement. Understanding the historical roots of the myth of scientific objectivity, this statement is the starting point for reestablishing the credibility of science through the basic scientific principle of verification by many parties. When this process is transparent, the veracity of the science can be scrutinized and confirmed. But this statement should also recognize that many of the constructs of environmental science can, as yet, only be stated in degrees of certainty. By acknowledging the uncertainty remaining in science, politicians (not scientists) would retain the responsibility for making the difficult choices for environmental protection—making the protection of the environment a public good. Who would make such a statement? Existing scientific advisory panels might consider making this their first (and last) explicitly political statement, clarifying their role with respect to the treaty-making process. Participants in negotiations might emphasize these points in the preparation for negotiations to clarify the context through which scientific inputs should be accepted. Finally, UNEP or other treaty sponsors might propose such a statement as part of the ground rules for the negotiation and implementation of resulting regimes.
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Affirmative Action Science For mechanisms of scientific verification to function effectively, the scientific field must be diverse enough for competing models to be advanced and challenged from many points of view. For example, stratospheric science would gain in credibility if researchers outside of the United States or in nongovernment sectors were able to evaluate independently the American governmental scientists’ results in that field. The critical challenge is to diversify the scientific field across nations and sectors. Collaborative institutions—whether conferences, publications, expeditions, or research facilities—promote the importance of global issues and aid in diversifying the field. According to Susskind and Ozawa (1992, p. 160), “all nations should commit themselves to strengthening the network of international scientific institutions.” But the cloak of international cooperation will not completely solve the glaring disparities in scientific and technological capabilities that exist among states today. Inevitably, international scientific institutions remain dominated by science generated in a handful of countries. As international institutions are ultimately the sum of their participants’ interests, and unless the less-endowed countries are more closely and more genuinely involved in the scientific process, any change is likely to be purely cosmetic. How can we move beyond cooperative ventures, involving only a token representation from the South, to genuinely collaborative efforts that reflect the scientific strengths and political interests of all participants? For one thing, cooperative undertakings need not be limited to hard technology issues such as developing stratospheric science in developing countries; soft technology issues like collaborative biodiversity prospecting can make creative use of indigenous expertise. Another important measure is to locate institutions and facilities in underrepresented countries and regions. Even if many of the participating scientists initially come from developed countries, situating them in the context of an LDC or a newly industrialized country (NIC) may help orient the perspective of the collaborative monitoring and analysis; it will certainly help to encourage the participation and further training of technicians from the host country. Another measure would emphasize South-South cooperation as well as NorthSouth exchanges. Whether on the scale of the Sino-Brazilian monitoring satellites or proposals for cooperative biodiversity cataloging within Latin America, countries in the same region or at similar stages of development will benefit from learning from each other as well as from the developed nations. Active measures to bolster indigenous scientific capacities will draw political attention to environmental issues and promote environmental learning at the domestic level, particularly in LDCs and NICs. Exchanges of data, methodologies, and personnel among scientific establishments in different nations, sectors, and disciplines may bring them into the membership of an epistemic community
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of environmental experts sharing common ways of ordering knowledge. States that participate effectively in environmental science and negotiation are then better able to implement agreements because they reap the benefits of the learning process of negotiation, incorporating at least some of the goals of the global community, and also because in the process of developing the scientific expertise to evaluate technical issues in negotiation, they lay the groundwork for the technical infrastructure required to implement the agreement. The active measures we suggest might be called affirmative action science. Besides waiting for individual states to strengthen their contributions to the network of international science, we call on UNEP, other intergovernmental organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and private foundations which sponsor environmental research to distribute projects and funding with the explicit aim of diversifying science. The primary rule would be to favor, as much as feasible, the allocation of funds, facilities, and tasks to geographic areas, categories of countries (grouped by level of technical development or by common interests), and sectors (public, private, or educational) that are currently underrepresented in environmental science. Returns in terms of political acceptability should be considered as important as other concerns for scientific accuracy and effectiveness. Of course, collaborative projects that meet these criteria would be especially welcome. A secondary rule on allocation of scientific resources would be to avoid the creation of monopolies by certain countries or groups of countries over certain fields of science. To do so, scientific tasks would have to be divided both horizontally (so that no country has a monopoly over one particular stage of the scientific learning process) and vertically (to minimize the risk of one scientific discipline being dominated entirely by one country or a handful of countries). The scientific process would operate diagonally, meaning that each step of the learning and monitoring process would ultimately be dependent upon other tasks performed in another country. The acceptability of science would be reinforced by dividing the scientific process into a large number of stages of similar importance and by enhancing the sense of interdependence. Affirmative action rules on the distribution of science would be a means of facilitating technology transfer from the industrialized countries to the LDCs, at least in the realm of the environmental sciences. There would be costs to be paid in the short run, both in terms of capital required and scientific efficiency lost. In the long run, however, as regimes and organizations invest increasing portions of their scientific budgets in developing countries, momentum would build up and bolster the capabilities of indigenous scientific communities. A diversified, interdependent network would further the political credibility of science and make for better science itself.
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A New Structure for Environmental Research Our final recommendation aims to define the role of science within the boundaries of a future environmental treaty regime. Politics and science are inextricably linked to the extent that it is futile, even counterproductive, to try to radically separate the two. They indeed complement each other in a two-way interaction. As we have tried to establish in the preceding pages, political considerations cannot, and should not, be divorced from the scientific process. To the contrary, scientific considerations should be integrated into the political negotiating process at mutually agreed and regularly scheduled intervals. This points to the need for a synergistic action of science and politics (see Figure 5.2). At the international level, as Susskind and Ozawa (1992) point out, the current convention-protocol approach to international environmental treaty making is ill-suited to the efficient utilization of scientific inputs. For one thing, the convention stage of the negotiating process does not require a full discussion of the science underlying the problem that the regime proposes to tackle. We propose not only to bring science into the political process under the conditions we described in our first recommendation, but also to institutionalize the interaction of politics with science into a predictable procedure. In our model, science would be channeled into a political mold right from the outset of the negotiation. It would amount to managing science so as to make it fit into the negotiation regime; not twisting the latter to make it comply with the specific exigencies of scientific knowledge, which in many instances are case-specific. The major characteristic of this proposal is that the scientific process would be bounded by political decision-making procedures. The first of these would be the topic for one of the very first decisions taken by treaty negotiators. Whether codified or ad hoc, the rules on scientific contribution would be set from the very start of the negotiating process. Ideally, the allocation of the scientific work would be decided at that stage; research needs would be defined and funds would be apportioned according to affirmative action standards. Once the rules on scientific inputs have been established, research, testing, and monitoring would be allowed to proceed unimpeded. Granted, not all scientific work on the topic under consideration could, nor should, be subject to these rules. In effect, a two-tiered scientific community might be created. “In-house” (regime-supported) science, although lagging in expertise, would be considered politically acceptable for the purpose of the negotiations. Outside science might advance in sophistication, but for the purpose of the negotiations its findings would be subject to validation by in-house panels. Most probably, the influence of independent outside scientific findings and research would prod political decision makers to push issues of particular concern through the first political filter. Also,
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FIGURE 5.2. A NEW STRUCTURE FOR REGIME-FUNDED INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH Environmental Issue
Outside Scientists and Monitoring
Political Filter #1: Rules on Scientific Inputs
Allocation of Scientific Work: —Research —Facilities —Funds —Distribution and Number of Scientists
Domestic Policy
New Analysis Pure, Unimpeded Scientific Process (Within Limits of Agreed Distribution) In-House Monitoring
Prescriptions, Scenarios
Domestic Policy Political Filter #2: Decision Making
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nongovernmental organizations would make their most forceful lobbying effort at that stage. That is a risk we should be willing to incur insofar as it reduces the probability that regimes would be rejected simply on their scientific content. However, should it be the case that the rift between in-house and externally generated science becomes too important, pressures would develop within the regime for the inclusion (subject to the workings of the first political filter) of theories, findings, models, and data originating outside the regime itself. Not only could a country (or a group of countries) exert pressure to elicit the inclusion of new ideas and data, it would also be possible for a country to pressure the political arm of the regime into refusing the inclusion of new scientific inputs or to block the adoption of new scientific paradigms. The products of in-house scientists would be models and scenarios for evaluation by the political participants in negotiations. Probability weights should also be ascribed to each of the elaborated scenarios for optimal information. Several options should be open for political decision makers to choose at their own will, according to their respective costs and benefits. The decision is admittedly an exclusively political one, in line with our assertion that it is the political leadership—and not the scientific community—which must take responsibility for the difficult choices necessary for environmental protection. But scientific inputs should not make a once-only foray into politics. Rather, science should continuously breathe energy into decision making by introducing new theories, new concepts, and new findings upon which the political arm of the regime would need to act. The second tier of the proposed model is to have science interact with the unfolding of the negotiation and its aftermath. Scientific inputs would start accruing again during the post-agreement monitoring phase. Ideally, a regular duration of time between the introduction of new scientific findings and the embracing of adaptive policies would be fixed. This model is highly amenable to the adoption of contingent agreements. As noted earlier, uncertainty about global environmental issues is a major characteristic of these negotiations. Just as scientific models are commonly proposed on the basis of limited data and amended as better data becomes available, prescriptions for action in environmental protection are also subject to improvement. Recognizing this, international agreements may incorporate measures for making environmental protection actions contingent on the results of future monitoring and scientific analysis. For contingent agreements to work, the regime must put into place internationally acceptable, verifiable mechanisms for scientific monitoring. Once the responsible officials have accepted the contingent agreements, it is not inappropriate for scientific panels to be charged with invoking one or another
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of the contingent measures on the basis of the accepted objective data. To a limited degree, the ozone layer agreements incorporate this provision. An even more preferable scheme would address advances beyond objective data to internalize new models or modes of analysis. This would require reconvening the political actors to make subjective evaluations of the new prescriptions or scenarios. Incorporating this feedback into the treaty structure would make it a mechanism for building the most valuable tool in global environmental protection: environmental learning. International environmental organizations (whether governmental or nongovernmental) are the most suited to construct this bridge between science and politics. Ideally, the proposed guidelines would be adopted by organizations such as UNEP into a codified document. All negotiations occurring under the aegis of UNEP would then be mandated to follow these procedures. Alternatively, a softer version of these rules could be adopted as part of framework agreements. Only the most general rules would be codified and it would be left to negotiators to hammer out, on an ad hoc basis, the precise figures regulating the contribution of scientists for each regime.
Conclusion Politics harbors a love-hate sentiment toward science and scientists. The rigor of the scientific rationale is appealing to political decision makers, especially when the interests they represent (or they perceive they should represent) are supported by cogent theory or incontrovertible evidence. However, the scientific process exhibits a great deal of rigidity that different actors cannot accommodate. The proposals presented in this chapter aim to correct the imbalances between science and politics as they have manifested themselves in international environmental negotiations. The call for an infusion of politics back into science challenges common assumptions about scientific objectivity, while the structural prescriptions presented here confront the difficult issue of political responsibility. In offering a new perspective on these problems we hope to prod both science and politics towards the overarching goal of global environmental protection.
Reference Barnes B., & Edge D. (1982). General Introduction. Science in Context: Readings in the Sociology of Science (p. 2). (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press) quoted in Haas (1990, p. 50).
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Notes 1. It might be argued that the arguments put forth by Japanese fishing interests about driftnet use or those put forth by some major whaling nations about multi-species management are examples of political use of scientific arguments. This kind of reasoning has been made possible by manipulating a better understanding of the science of species population dynamics. 2. For an illustration of this approach, see the 1 June 1992 issue of The New American, and in particular “Nothing More Than Hot Air” (pp. 7–8) in which John F. McManus aims to dispel the myth that scientists are united behind the notion that CO2 emissions pose a serious threat to the earth’s climate. 3. This is not to suggest that computer modeling is without use. To the contrary, it represents the only available source of discernment on some issues (such as global warming) that are essentially beyond our immediate perception and grasp. However, it remains but a broad brush depiction of the complicated relationship between humanity and the natural environment. 4. For example, Sarah Laird (1993, p. 119) contends that prospecting for drugs is markedly more successful when use is made of what she refers to as the “ethnobotanical filter.” 5. Citing Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Robert Proctor (1991, p. 211) elaborates the point: “One sees (at least to some degree) what one wants to see, what one thinks it is possible to see. In China, where cosmological traditions envisioned a changing universe, sunspots and new stars were recorded as part of the natural course of events. In the West, such violations of the immutable crystalline spheres often went unnoticed, at least until the Copernican revolution destroyed the spheres and ushered in a new conception of the universe.” 6. See for instance, Peter Haas’s (1991, p. 50) discussion of this debate during the Med Plan negotiations and how it might have reflected the interests of France, the dominant power in the region. 7. Earlier U.S. critiques of the project had focused on the Concorde’s emission of nitrogen oxides in the stratosphere as a reason why it should not be granted access to American airports. This analysis proved unfounded so that when the (well-grounded) CFC scare emerged, distrust was at its peak. 8. Attempting to adopt foreign technology without admitting the corrupting influence of foreign political philosophies became a source of tension for the Chinese leadership. This problem has been debated in China since the nineteenth century. Qing dynasty reformers promoted a distinction between “ti” (essence) and “yong” (use)—retaining a traditional Chinese essence or philosophy while adopting foreign innovations for practical use. 9. UNCHE was one of the first opportunities for the Beijing government to appear in a U.N. forum; special assistance from the UNCHE secretariat helped China to arrive as one of the best prepared, if least cooperative, of the developing countries at the Stockholm meeting (see Najam, 1993; Herter and Binder, 1993). 10. The Salzburg Initiative “is the product of conversations among more than 100 diplomats, environmentalists, corporate executives, journalists, and international relations experts from 20 countries—both North and South. Beginning in 1988 with support from the United States Greeley Foundation for Peace in Justice, meetings held in Austria, Germany, and the United States and subsequent extensive interaction with activists and politicians in dozens of countries produced the ten key recommendations” (IENN, 1992, p. 6).
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Y CHAPTER SIX
SCIENCE AND ECONOMICS IN CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL NEGOTIATIONS Peter Zapfel
nternational environmental negotiations require extensive scientific input. This chapter investigates the role of one discipline, economics, in an effort to generate recommendations about its role in dealing with the intensive negotiation efforts in this decade surrounding the global environmental issue of climate change. Social science, and economics in particular, has become a significant factor in climate change negotiations. At present, the United States is prominent among those nations opposing firm targets and timetables for emission reductions of greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide).1 The United States is also a country in which the influence of economists and economic analysis in public decision making is stronger than in many other countries, both industrialized and developing. The literature of treaty negotiation has recognized that the role of science is unclear. A set of reform proposals known as the Salzburg Initiative (Susskind, 1994) includes a recommendation about the relationship between science and politics. On the basis of a survey of scientists from various disciplines, this chapter evaluates the hypothesis that economics constitutes an impediment to more profound international agreement on climate change. In addition, the survey will offer guidance on how economics should impinge on international environmental negotiations and the interaction of science and politics. The group of scientists interviewed was selected from about 2,500 experts participating in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
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Admittedly, the restriction of the sample to scientists working on climate change issues limits the perspective of the survey. Further research could investigate the same issue by addressing scientists, negotiators and policy makers working on climate change as well as other issues. The first section of the chapter provides an overview of the literature on the role of science in public policy in general and in environmental issues. The next section describes economics as a social science and offers a brief review of the history and negotiations of climate change. Following a detailed introduction to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the final section presents the results of the survey. Finally, these results are used to recommend ways to improve and reform the process of international environmental negotiations in terms of the interaction of science, economics and politics.
Science and Public Policy Science and technology have experienced enormous progress in the last decades. At the same time the influence of scientists on politics has grown steadily. Nowadays many governments make use of scientific advisory bodies (one of the numerous examples is the Council of Economic Advisors in the United States) in formulating their policies. This has led to science-intensive decision-making processes. However, there are no established theories and only a small set of literature about the relationship between science and politics. As construed in the political realm, science is assumed to be free of value judgments. Ozawa (1991) refers to this approach as Logical Positivist Empiricism (LPE). In this view, science is politically neutral, data are objective because they are collected through experiment and observation, and every problem has a true and well-defined answer. Any scientific disagreement is ultimately caused by error. Obviously this viewpoint is a rather theoretical one. In practice, as Caldwell (1990) states “government investment in science . . . is influenced heavily by particular interests and with little effort to assess relative benefits to society.” Ozawa has also developed a suggestion on how scientists and politicians should interact. This approach is called “consensus-based decision making” (CBDM). In CBDM, scientific disagreement may be traced to types of phenomena, of which error—the predominant cause of scientific falsehood if the logical positivist construction of science is accepted—is only one source. Ozawa suggests that scientific disagreement may also be traced to differences in research design, differences in the interpretation of data or findings, confusing communication and inappropriate policy prescriptions.
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The LPE paradigm implies a major change in the way science and politics should interact. Politicians have used sophisticated scientific language as a shield behind which to advance political views. CBDM calls for open discussion among scientists and political opponents in order to elicit the basis for scientific disagreement. It enables all parties to a conflict, regardless of their resources, to understand the basis of disagreements and participate in decision making. Such an approach to international environmental negotiations could be of special benefit in allaying the defensive impulses of developing countries in areas in which industrialized countries hold more or less a monopoly on scientific knowledge. Several theorists have posited ways in which science can intersect with decision making. Ozawa identifies four phases of the decision-making process in which science may be involved: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Agenda-setting Problem formulation Identification of alternatives Decision choice
Susskind (1994) separates the environmental negotiation processes into four stages also: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Issue definition Fact-finding Bargaining Regime strengthening
With regard to the infusion of scientific evidence into decision-making and negotiation processes, Susskind (1994) has defined five potential roles for scientists: trend spotters, theory builders, theory testers, science communicators and applied policy analysts. Revenier and Henderson (1994) mention four ways in which scientists might intervene in international environmental negotiation processes, to 1. 2. 3. 4.
Identify problems Focus attention and ways of thinking Predict possible outcomes Monitor progress
Clearly, natural scientists should play different roles than social scientists. Natural scientists are more engaged in the early stages as, in Susskind’s taxonomy,
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trend spotters and theory builders. The expertise of social scientists will be needed at later stages as applied policy analysts in evaluating alternatives and assisting in the decision process. A relatively new idea relating to international relations theory, international environmental negotiations and the interface of science and policy is the concept of epistemic communities as termed by Haas (1992). An epistemic community is a transnational, informal group of scientists, government officials and others with a shared belief in a global problem and ways to solve it. They form a lobbying or pressure group supporting international action to counter the problem. Haas (1990) has argued for the existence of this phenomenon based upon his studies of the Mediterranean Action Plan. In the literature the idea has earned several critical comments. The spectrum of reactions ranges from outright rejection to doubts that epistemic communities can do very much to make policy more effective. Zartman (1992) argues that transnational interest groups form in response to national agreements and not in order to advance them. Porter and Brown (1996) are ambivalent in acknowledging on the one hand that “scientific elites may play a supportive and enabling role in some . . . negotiations” but stating also that “on other issues they remained divided or even captured by particular . . . interests.” Boehmer-Christiansen (1996) and Susskind (1994) are among those who question the usefulness of epistemic communities. Boehmer-Christiansen thinks that “the epistemic approach tends seriously to exaggerate the independence of expert communities from the political process.” She also stresses that the existence of these expert communities above politics raises very serious questions. A similar view is supported by Susskind when he mentions the boomerang effect. He believes that epistemic communities acting in ignorance of national interests are not sustainable since political actors will replace these scientists with others who support national agendas. Finally, Young (1994) regards epistemic communities as “neither necessary nor sufficient to the achievement of regime formation.” It appears certainly true that the epistemic community is a vague concept in need of refinement. So far the idea has been limited to scientists and scienceliterate actors working for the advancement of global agreement. These communities could also include other actors (for example, business) working against consensus on solving global or regional environmental problems. An alternative theoretical approach to the interaction between science and politics is the idea of Advocacy Coalition Frameworks (ACF). ACF is a theory positing that public policy is formed through competition—competing coalitions in which one prevails and sets the policy. Coalition formation is based upon a three-tiered set of beliefs (deep-core normative beliefs, near-core policy beliefs, and secondary aspects). Some beliefs are easier to change than others.
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In this view, policy changes are seen either as a product of interactions within a coalition or a reaction to system-wide events. Scientists come into play through the contribution of policy-oriented learning within a coalition or policy subsystem. For example, the IPCC was a major factor in the policy-oriented learning that occurred within the international policy subsystem that favored action to combat global warming in the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) negotiations.
The Influence of Economics and Economic Analysis Economics is an academic discipline initiated by the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith about two centuries ago. It is the behavior of homo oeconomicus, that is the rational individual who is trying to maximize individual well-being (or utility in economists’ jargon). Since its foundation, several subdisciplines (microeconomics, macroeconomics, political economy and so on) and applied branches (among others financial, industrial, environmental and labor economics) have developed. For the sake of argument, this chapter will focus on the work of welfare economics. The centerpiece of this branch is the Pareto criterion as a measure of the maximization of social well-being. The underlying decision rule recommends that a policy/action should be undertaken, if at least one person in society is better off (measured in utility) and no one else is made worse off. In a substantially weakened form—the Kaldor-Hicks criterion—a policy is worth pursuing if the winners’ gain is greater than the losers’ loss. Alternatively one can think of costs and benefits. An action should be taken if the benefits exceed the costs. Welfare economics has developed a decision tool called cost-benefit analysis. Implicit assumptions for the use of this technique are that all costs and benefits are quantifiable and in monetary or other units. In order to compare costs and benefits accrued over a longer time period, the discounting of future payments to their net present value is applied.2 This concept implicitly assumes, if applied over long time horizons (as in climate change) that future generations will value all resources (for example, trees) in terms of tradable units without qualitative differentiation. Cost-benefit analysis is controversial not only outside the discipline but also inside; some economists, for example, Lave (1996), doubt its usefulness. It appears that cost-benefit analysis and discounting are useful tools but their applicability is restricted to decisions that involve highly uncertain consequences in terms of future costs and benefits and stretch over time spans of more than one generation. The results of economic analyses should be interpreted carefully. Although economists
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use sophisticated quantitative (statistical and mathematical) tools the outcomes must be viewed as having wide margins of error.
History of the Negotiations on Climate Change Climate change (or global warming or greenhouse effect) is known to be among the most prominent global environmental problems. The essence of the problem is that increased concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, CFCs etc.) in the atmosphere would cause global surface temperatures to increase by about 1.5 to 4 degrees Celsius in the next 50 years. While there is basic scientific agreement about the increase in average global temperatures, human knowledge about regional weather patterns and about potential change in the regional patterns is incomplete. At present, it is expected that temperature increases will be higher in areas closer to the poles and lower closer to the equator. However, major scientific uncertainty persists about these nonlinear atmospheric responses. A high degree of scientific agreement has been achieved about the sources of increased greenhouse gas production. The burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) is the main contributor to CO2 concentrations while livestock farming and rice paddies are among the contributors to methane emissions. According to Boehmer-Christiansen (1996) the issue of global warming was originally mentioned in 1827 by a scientist called Fourier. International awareness did not emerge until the 1980s, although the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) had hosted the First World Climate Conference in 1979. In 1988 the Toronto NGO Conference on the Changing Atmosphere Implications for Global Security took place. This event resulted in a call for a 20 percent reduction of global carbon dioxide emissions. The culmination of international efforts was the signing of the Framework Convention on Climate Change on May 9, 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The FCCC does not contain any specific and enforceable obligations except a commitment to produce national reports on anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and sinks in order to facilitate a global greenhouse gas inventory.3 So far the Conference of the Parties (COP) has met twice: 1995 in Berlin, Germany, and 1996 in Geneva, Switzerland. The next COP will take place in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997. The COP-2 meeting in July 1996 concluded with an unexpected result. For the first time, the United States—up to then among the block of veto states— has supported the initiative to pursue firm reduction targets and timetables for the post-2000 period.
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Skolnikoff (1993) has presented an excellent discussion of the complexity of the challenge of negotiating effective agreements on global climate change policies. He has attributed the following six characteristics to the climate change issue: 1. Interdependence of interests 2. Interaction of two large, complex systems: ecosystem and human socioeconomic system 3. Large, contentious and persistent scientific uncertainty (about the causes of climate change, the effects of precipitation, sea level and ice cover, the temporal and spatial distribution of effects, consequences on agriculture, human health and diseases, urban and coastal areas) 4. Global nature of causes, effects, actions and policies while differences between industrialized and developing countries persist 5. Dependence on science and scientists 6. The perception of a planetary threat
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was jointly established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and UNEP to assess the scientific, technical and socioeconomic research in the field of climate change. The results of IPCC’s work were and are used as input in the negotiations on the FCCC and subsequent protocols. By the end of 1996 the IPCC had produced and published 17 scientific reports (see Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 1996a, Appendix II), including two comprehensive assessments (1990 and 1995). According to Moomaw (1996) about 2,500 scientists have been involved in the research done so far. Boehmer-Christiansen (1996) refers to IPCC as “the largest international exercise in scientific-advice-giving.” These facts make the Panel an ideal object to study the interactions of science, economics and politics in environmental treaty making. The IPCC Secretariat is located at the WMO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Each Working Group (WG) has a Technical Support Unit (TSU). WG I is coordinated from the Hadley Centre of Climate Prediction and Research at the U.K. Meteorological Office. WG II in Washington, D.C., is located at the United States Global Change Research Program. Finally, the TSU for WG III is Margaree Consultants in Toronto, Canada. WG III serves as the primary means for conducting economic analysis (modeling, cost studies of emission reductions, impact of carbon taxes and so on) used in climate change negotiations.
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The semiannual IPCC plenary sessions are attended by government scientists, research managers, and (mainly junior) government officials working on national climate policies or preparing negotiations (Boehmer-Christiansen, 1996). These sessions are for formal decisions only. Most of the scientific work is done within the Working Groups and subdivisions of them. The IPCC Secretariat selects authors and reviewers for reports in accordance with governments. Table 6.1 shows the results of a structural analysis of the nationalities of climate change experts active in the IPCC. The data comes from the listings of contributors and reviewers in the appendixes of the three reports that constitute the Second Assessment (IPCC, 1996a, 1996b, 1996c). As the table highlights, Annex II—often referred to as “developed countries”— contribute almost 80 percent of IPCC scientists. The 615 members from the United States represent more than 31 percent of total IPCC participants. The five largest delegations (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Germany) include 1120 people or almost 58 percent of the analyzed sample. The five-country concentration index is a very good indicator for the substantial agglomeration of scientific know-how in a few advanced countries in the developed world. Table 6.2 underlines the strong dominance of industrialized countries by calculating the average number of IPCC participants per country group. Table 6.3 compares the relative shares of country groups in the IPCC with their economic wealth (measured in 1993 Gross National Product figures). The Index of Equivalency in the last column has been generated by dividing the IPCC figure by the GNP figure. An index greater than 1 has to be interpreted as overrepresentation compared to the yardstick of economic wealth, while an index below 1 indicates under-proportional representation in the IPCC. Because of the small figures involved the index figure for Africa is of limited value.
TABLE 6.1.
Developed Countries5 Transition Economies6 Asia Latin America Africa Others7 Total
NATIONALITY OF IPCC MEMBERS BY WORLD REGIONS.4 WG I
WG II
WG III
Total
675 38 26 34 19 14 806
723 28 70 49 42 29 941
180 10 21 9 8 8 236
1539 76 117 91 68 50 1941
Source: Calculations of the author based on IPCC (1996a,b,c).
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TABLE 6.2.
EXPERT CONCENTRATION RATES OF IPCC MEMBERS BY WORLD REGIONS. A
B
C
D
1 5 3 9 7 6
7 9 — 3 3 — 9
2 4
Asia
1 1 7
6 — 0
2 1
Latin America
9 1
1 3
Africa
6 8
4 — 7 — 3 — 5
Others
5 0
2 — 6
NA NA
3 — 3 0 0 — 3 5 0 — 2 9 0 — 3 6 0 — 1 8 NA NA
Total
1 9 4 1
1 0 0
NA NA
NA NA
Developed Countries
Transition Economies
1 1
1 9
A Total B Percentage of total C Number of countries D Concentration rate in percentage Source: Calculations of the author based on IPCC (1996a,b,c).
Economists form the thrust of WG III. The current WG III was only initiated in 1993, after the former WG II and WG III were merged into the current WG II the same year. In a critical evaluation of the work of the IPCC between 1988 and 1992 Boehmer-Christiansen (1994) concludes that the IPCC was most successful in the promotion of interdisciplinary research but less so in providing policy advice. The reason given is an isolation of the IPCC from the political process. This isolation is caused by the size of the body and the Working Group structure. Boehmer-Christiansen
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TABLE 6.3.
139
IPCC MEMBERS AND GNP BY WORLD REGIONS (AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL).
Developed Countries Transition Economies Asia Latin America Africa Others Total
A
B
C
79.3 3.9 6.0 4.7 3.5 2.6 100.0
80.2 2.9 9.6 5.7 1.6 NA 100.0
1.01 1.34 0.63 0.82 2.19 NA NA
A IPCC members in percentage B Percent share of 1993 World GNP C Index of equivalency Source: Calculations of the author based on IPCC (1996a,b,c) and World Bank (1994).
remarks also that the model used in the Panel’s work up to 1992 is questionable. It rests on the assumption that natural science is the only source of advice needed by politicians.
Survey Design and Results In order to gather empirical evidence for some ideas and to serve as an input for the formulation of recommendations, an electronic mail survey (see appendix for survey text) was addressed to a stratified sample of 63 IPCC scientists who participated as contributors and/or reviewers to the Second Assessment Report in 1995. The sample was selected to be representative of the regional distribution along one axis and scientific disciplines (in terms of the strength of the three Working Groups) along the other. Table 6.4 shows the composition of the sample. TABLE 6.4.
Developed Countries Transition Economies Asia Latin America Africa Others Total
COMPOSITION OF SURVEY SAMPLE. WG I
WG II
WG III
Total
21 1 2 1 1 0 26
25 1 1 1 1 1 30
5 0 1 1 0 0 7
51 2 4 3 2 1 63
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Out of the 63 questionnaires sent out within a period of three and a half weeks 35 responses were received. The composition of the respondents is illustrated in Table 6.5. The most important results of the survey are presented and discussed below. The first important question in the survey (No. 2) was designed to elicit opinion about the relative importance of social versus natural sciences in the climate change issue. Table 6.6 shows the replies. As the table shows, the majority considers the two basic scientific disciplines to be equally important. Three natural scientists considered social sciences to be more important, while no declared social scientist gave natural sciences a stronger weight. A set of questions (Nos. 3 to 6) was designed to deliver some input about the use of economic analysis in climate change negotiations. Table 6.7 illuminates the distribution of answers. Several observations can be made about these results. Cost-benefit analysis and discounting are less popular than the use of economic analysis for setting a global reduction target or choosing instruments to avert or mitigate climate change. None of the questions received outright denial (average close to 1.0) or strong agreement (average close to 2.0). Agreement was strongest that economics should be used in the choice of policy instrument. Aggregating the responses to the four questions yields an economics acceptance indicator (see footnote for computation) of 1.65. This raw figure shows that the questioned sample acknowledges the use of economic analysis but does not embrace it fully. TABLE 6.5.
Developed Countries All Others Total Response Rate in %
TABLE 6.6.
COMPOSITION OF RESPONDENTS. WG I
WG II
WG III
17 0 17 65.4
15 1 16 53.3
1 1 2 28.6
Total 33 2 35 55.5
Response Rate in % 64.7 16.7 55.5
RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CLIMATE CHANGE.
(Scientists) Natural more important Equal importance Social more important Total
Natural
Social
Total
5 21 3 29
0 4 2 6
5 25 5 35
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TABLE 6.7.
Cost-Benefit Analysis Discounting Global Goal Setting Instrument Choice Total
141
THE ROLE OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS. no (1)
yes, but/ no, but8 (1.5)
yes (2)
Total9
10 12 5 3 30
10 6 11 6 33
15 13 18 25 71
1.57 1.52 1.69 1.82 1.6510
In order to test the level of understanding of economic concepts I have performed a simple check. The use of cost-benefit analysis and discounting are, from the economic point of view, interrelated in the climate change issue because of the long-term character of the problem. I have therefore looked at how many respondents opposed one while supporting the other. Two respondents oppose cost-benefit analysis and support discounting. Four scientists like cost-benefit analysis while rejecting discounting. All of them declared themselves to be natural scientists. By use of this simple test one comes to the conclusion that a number of natural scientists do not fully understand economic concepts. A pair of questions (Nos. 7 and 8) were dedicated to the issue of value-free science. While one question concerned value-freedom in general, the other was directed toward value-freedom of science in environmental treaty negotiations. Table 6.8 provides the results. A clear picture emerges from the table. Most scientists themselves do not believe in value-free use, neither in a general sense nor in the context of climate change negotiations. Fourteen respondents answered No to both questions, while only one person answered Yes in both cases. The clearest answer came in response to the question about the need for interdisciplinary work (No. 9). Thirty-two out of 35 respondents see a need for increased scientific cooperation and interdisciplinary work in particular between economics and natural scientists. Diverging results surface from the question (No. 10) about infusing scientific evidence into the climate change negotiations. While 19 respondents are not TABLE 6.8.
In general In treaty negotiations Total
VALUE-FREE SCIENCE. no (1)
yes, but/ no, but11 (1.5)
yes (2)
19 25 44
9 6 15
7 4 11
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satisfied with the negotiators, eleven thought that their work is taken into account sufficiently. No clear trend emerges from the pair of questions (Nos. 11 and 12) designed to elicit opinions about the distribution of scientific know-how around the globe. Table 6.9 shows the outcome. Finally, an unintended and surprising result emerged from question No. 13 in which respondents were asked to guess the share of Annex II country scientists in the IPCC. The question was designed to determine if IPCC scientists are aware of the dominance of Annex II scientists. However, it was clear from the responses that most scientists do not read treaties. Seventeen respondents did not nominate a guess at all (some of them indicated explicitly that they had no idea what Annex II is) and the guesses received do not indicate an understanding of the question. The highest guess was 50 percent, substantially lower than the actual share of about 80 percent. The average guess was 15 percent. Related survey work has been done by Nordhaus (1994a). What was originally intended as an exercise to gather expert opinion data as input for quantitative modeling of climate change ended in a stand-alone publication that elicits interesting results. Nordhaus interviewed 19 scientists who had a strong interest in the economic impacts of global warming and a working knowledge of statistics. The sample comprised 10 economists (three environmental and seven mainstream economists), four other social scientists as well as five natural scientists and engineers. The survey was designed to obtain estimates on the economic impacts of three alternative warming scenarios (expressed as x degree global average surface temperature increase in y number of years) by asking for expected consequent losses (expressed in percentage figures) in gross world product. The results illuminate several interesting facts. Of no surprise was the wide range of estimates in all scenarios even among experts. However, the clear differences among the disciplines were unexpected. Natural scientists expect economic effects to be about 20 to 30 times as severe as mainstream economists. Almost
TABLE 6.9.
DISTRIBUTION OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERTISE. yes, but/ no (1) no, but12 (1.5) yes (2)
More even spread would further negotiations Locate research institutes in developing countries Total
13 17 30
3 5 8
19 11 30
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unanimously all experts expect developing countries’ economies to be hit harder than the ones in developed countries. Many non-economists made a strong point regarding difficulties of natural ecosystems to adapt to global warming. The experts believe most impact to lie in market areas and not in other ones like human health, species and plant diversity. Several people were concerned about the limited knowledge of the biogeochemical system and some even assumed an intrinsic unknowability of the system. One response to the Nordhaus survey is representative of the attitudes of those surveyed (Nordhaus, 1994a): “I must tell you that I marvel that economists are willing to make quantitative estimates of economic consequences of climate change where the only measure available are estimates of global surface average increases in temperatures. As one who has spent his career worrying about the vagaries of the dynamics of the atmosphere, I marvel that they can translate a single global number, an extremely poor surrogate for a description of the climatic conditions, into quantitative estimates of impacts of global economic conditions.”
Recommendations The recommendations below concern three broad aspects of environmental negotiation. First, a pattern for the interaction between scientists and policy-makers in negotiations is suggested. Second, some suggestions are formulated about the structure of science in a broad sense. The final recommendation is geared towards redefining the role of economists in environmental negotiations. In general, the recommendations are not formulated in an operationalized way but rather indicate some broad directions for future development. Since some of them require paradigm shifts, they are designed to raise issues, and point to new directions for research, rather than to offer solutions. Recommendation 1: Abandon the Illusion of Value-Free Science Because some environmental problems are the result of very complex interactions between human beings and ecosystems, negotiations concerning them require considerable scientific input. Environmental problems have revealed the limits we face in understanding nature, even in technically advanced societies. The greenhouse effect is only one example of such a situation (others are biological diversity and endangered species). Even assuming we are able to gather sufficient scientific evidence, it might come too late to contribute to an effective policy response. Global warming is sometimes contested by those claiming that temperature increases measured over the last decade are not necessarily indicative of long-term
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temperature trends, and therefore do not justify preventative action. However, to reach a high degree of scientific certainty we would probably have to wait for another century or two. Should global warming indeed exist, by that point it might be irreversible. The basic lesson to draw is that value-free science is an illusion to be abandoned. This recommendation is strongly supported by empirical evidence provided in Table 6.8. However, I do not want to rule out the value of good science. The point is that a certain share of science will never be value-free. Scientists are used for political purposes and some may use their scientific reputation to pursue self-interest. The use of government experts by political forces subverts the appropriate relationship between science and politics. In an ideal world scientific input should be used to formulate policies. In practice, science is often used to support preferences for policies that have already been determined regardless of scientific evidence. The philosopher Capra (1996) articulates this argument well: “It is generally not recognized that values are not peripheral to science and technology . . . Although much of the detailed research may not depend explicitly on the scientists’ value system, the larger paradigm within which this research is pursued will never be value free. Scientists, therefore, are responsible for their research not only intellectually but also morally.” Both natural and social scientists are potentially both victims and delinquents at the same time. Politicians in favor or against action to combat global warming choose scientists as advisors to argue in accordance with their subjective beliefs or agendas. Natural scientists hesitant to agree to the existence of the greenhouse effect and economists reluctant to recommend policies to abate greenhouse gases (for example, carbon taxes) are used by politicians opposing action on climate change and vice versa. Self-interest crystallizes itself for example, in the IPCC as a perpetual demand for more scientific knowledge (Boehmer-Christiansen, 1996). Another downside of this illusion or ideal of value-free science could be that some scientists in their endeavor to live up to the theoretical ideal refuse to work with political actors although their input might be valuable and required to further political and negotiation processes. The economic debate between Nordhaus (1994b) and Cline (1992) demonstrates how science should not be done. Both experts have done some modeling of the impacts of carbon taxes and other abatement policies on economic growth and social welfare. While Nordhaus has concluded that the U.S. economy as a whole would lose by taking action to reduce CO2 emissions, Cline recommends carbon taxes based upon his modeling results. The outcomes of the models differ not because one of the economists has made a mistake but because of the choice of some critical assumptions (for example, discount rate). Policy makers lacking
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an understanding of the technical details of the analyses have an easy task hiding behind their expert of choice. The implementation of the recommendation might be very difficult. Journalism and the media coverage of environmental issues could contribute to a more widespread acceptance of the fact that science is not value-free. However, the new paradigm raises the question: How should science and policy interact if the old paradigm is obsolete? The second recommendation offers an answer to this question. Recommendation 2: Use a Consensus-Based Infusion Process in Early or Pre-Negotiation The way science is viewed and scientific evidence is infused into negotiation processes should be redefined. The core of this new paradigm is derived from Ozawa’s consensus-based approach. If scientific evidence is not fully conclusive because of major uncertainties, scientists should be more active in explaining the major areas of uncertainty and incomplete knowledge, the differences in research design and the interpretation of data and findings to policy makers. Scientists have to change their behavior, becoming more active and explaining their work in a nontechnical language, while policy makers have to be more receptive to understanding the limitations and importance of crucial assumptions chosen in economic and other analyses. To institutionalize this altered infusion process I suggest the formation of Science-Policy Interaction Panels (SPIPs) in negotiation processes. Three issues are crucial for SPIPs to be effective: selection of participants, the choice of a facilitator or moderator, and timing. The scientists participating in these panels should be selected to represent the whole range of opinions existing in the respective areas. When policy makers and negotiation delegates are confronted with extreme scenarios, they are more likely to think critically about the contents of scientific communication. The presentation of dissenting opinions should encourage them to question the differences in the outcome and increase an awareness of the assumptions inherent in analyses. From the political side it is not exactly clear who should attend. In any case it should be politicians and negotiators who can influence the formulation of negotiating strategies and political beliefs. In the choice of a facilitator for an SPIP one should try to find a person known to be neutral on the issue, to increase the confidence of participants. A U.N. commission or office could take the responsibility to select the moderator and location of SPIP meetings.
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The timing of the meetings is as important as the participants. To have an impact on policy formulation, the meetings have to take place at an early stage of the negotiation process, that is in the pre-negotiating or preparatory phase. Once policy makers have made up their minds it will be more difficult to gain their attention. A possible further extension to the SPIPs could be to institutionalize regular meetings between policy makers and scientists in order to frame the global environmental agenda. These meetings should also be attended by NGIs. The objective would not be to transmit expertise from science to politics but to serve as a forum for open discussion of which specific international or regional negotiations are to be initiated. One problem that might arise with institutionalized regular meetings is the setting of the agenda. While the agenda in SPIPs sets itself, the institutionalized meetings would require a mechanism regulating who should decide what is to be discussed. It should also be possible to design a series of meetings to form the global agenda prior to conventions and SPIPs. The meetings could function as a tool to bridge the period from convention signing to protocol negotiations. Incorporating the first two recommendations should constitute progress but some science-related problems will persist. In the case of truly global environmental problems like climate change, the proposed steps still face a major obstacle—the uneven distribution of scientific expertise among countries. Recommendation 3: Mitigate Uneven Distribution of Scientific Expertise Research institutions, scientists and scientific know-how are clustered in industrialized countries. The above discussion of the IPCC demonstrates this problem.13 Why do these asymmetries in expertise constitute a severe problem? The greenhouse effect serves as an excellent example to highlight the issue. Global warming is a consequence of lifestyle patterns pursued in the developed world which require the extensive burning of fossil fuels. However, to avert or adapt to climate change, concerted action is required of both developed and developing countries; further uncontrolled economic development in less advanced countries would increase global carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions substantially even if developed countries reduce their share by quite a bit. Based on evidence collected primarily by scientists from developed countries, policy makers are asking developing countries to make commitments for the common good. If scientific know-how would be more evenly distributed around the globe, evidence gathered by developing countries would probably increase their sensitivity to the problem and their willingness to make sacrifices.
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Joint Implementation ( JI)14—an idea originated in the United States—has to be viewed from a similar perspective. The controversy between developed (pro JI) and developing (contra JI) countries highlights the limits of economic analysis. A problem in essence caused by rich countries requires a solution calling for perceived economic sacrifice in developing countries. Although it makes economically perfect sense to first pursue the least expensive steps toward reducing emissions globally, reasoning based solely upon economic grounds does not further the negotiation process. While natural scientific knowledge is more dispersed throughout the world, economics as a scientific discipline is a product of Anglo-Saxon culture and has not even been dispersed over the European continent (Amann and others, 1995). An example: Russia has internationally renowned research institutions in the natural sciences (for example, physics and mathematics) but economics is in its infancy. Three non-exclusive strategies can be applied to the resolution of this problem: 1. Transfer knowledge by sending consultants to developing countries. 2. Build capacity by educating and training people from developing countries in developed countries. 3. Build a permanent base of knowledge in less advanced countries by setting up universities as well as international and national research and academic institutions, locating treaty secretariats, and so on. The first alternative is a quick-fix solution that does not address the root of the problem. The use of consultants in the context of international financial assistance for environmental projects in Central and Eastern Europe has been problematic (Amann and others, 1995). The second alternative is a popular medium-term solution and quite effective method of dispersing scientific knowledge. Economic knowledge has been dispersed quite widely in this way. The third alternative as a long-term option has widely been ignored. In the end, negotiations and the fashioning of agreements will be facilitated if developing countries are able to produce scientific knowledge by themselves. The Salzburg Initiative (Susskind, 1992) includes the need to strengthen collaborative international scientific institutions. This recommendation accepts that need and supplements it by locating scientific institutions in the developing countries themselves. In addition, financial support for initiating and establishing national research institutes in developing countries is also recommended. The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe located in Budapest, Hungary, is a move in this direction and deserves imitation.
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In conclusion, the first two strategies should be further pursued and increased effort put into measures in the spirit of the third alternative. The diverging opinions of the surveyed sample with regard to distribution of scientific expertise and location of institutes in developing countries are displayed in Table 6.9. Survey respondents may have been reluctant to embrace this idea because they are from industrialized countries and they see their interests threatened by research budgets and work migrating to developing countries. Since the response rate for scientists from developing countries was very low, I cannot further analyze this issue. Recommendation 4: Strengthen Interdisciplinary Interactions The problem of insufficient interdisciplinary interaction in research was raised over a decade ago by Chen (1983) in the context of carbon dioxide emissions and anthropogenically induced climate change. However, little has been done to remedy this weakness in environmental research. Despite this circumstance, in response to the survey, an overwhelming majority of respondents called for more cooperation and interdisciplinary activity. Stern and others (1993) present an excellent case for the need of interdisciplinary work. They define the following characteristics of environmental systems: complex interdependencies, nonlinear responses, irreversible changes, and long lag times. They state that “these characteristics of the global environment present serious challenges for scientific research and may call for new theories and methods.” Stern and others also call for “alliances across disciplines, particularly between social scientists and natural scientists.” This describes an interdisciplinary model of research rather than the multidisciplinary approach of the IPCC.15 The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) located in Laxenburg, Austria, is a valuable example of how to approach this work. IIASA was founded in the 1970s as a joint initiative between the Soviet Union and the United States to create a forum for scientific cooperation and work on global problems despite Cold War tensions. Scientists from several countries and various disciplines have successfully worked together at IIASA for two decades. The work of IIASA is more of a multidisciplinary than interdisciplinary character, however, the institute demonstrates a way to fund interdisciplinary work on a sustainable basis. The difficulties of obtaining funding for interdisciplinary project proposals outlined by Chen (1983) still remain. An interesting concept that might deserve further study is the idea of Vernetztes Denken16 developed by the Swiss scientist Frederic Vester (1986, 1988). In this framework, systems are regarded as consisting of various elements linked with
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each other. By analyzing the elements and linkages one can distinguish between four types of elements. One type, so-called active elements, is most suitable for inducing desired system changes. Recommendation 5: Defining a Role for Economic Analysis It is not easy to devise a role for economists and economic analysis in environmental diplomacy. Traditionally, environmental studies and economics have been regarded as two opposing poles. This attitude is nowadays much stronger in the United States than in Western Europe. Looking at the historical process of how environmental issues have entered the political stage both domestically and internationally, we see that natural scientists have been the major promoters from the scientific side.17 Economists did not become part of the discussion of environmental issues as early as natural scientists. The most influential journal in the realm of environmental economics, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, was established in 1974. The Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE), a leading association of environmental economists, was founded in 1978. While there was some economic work on environmental issues prior to these dates, environmental economics did not get any serious attention before the 1972 Stockholm Conference. The IPCC has seen a similar developmental process. Economists have only participated in the panel’s work since 1993. What can be said about the arrival of economics in environmental sciences and diplomacy, and what role should be played by economics? Mainstream economic thinkers have considered climate change, particularly the stabilization or reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, from the standpoint of cost, concluding that it would be very expensive in terms of reduced economic growth. In cost-benefit analysis, economists compare emission reduction investments now against the uncertain benefits of averted climate change in the future. If these future benefits are discounted, active climate change policy will inevitably appear costly to society. Neoclassical economics assumes a high rate of substitutability among various amenities and continuing technological progress based on projections of the recent past.18 The economic argument has been that, because of the immense uncertainties involved, we should either do nothing, or pursue no-regret options—those that will pay off even if climate change does not exist. As Holdren (1996) points out, more uncertainty exists among the public and probably also among negotiators than among scientists.19 Economists, however, seem to assume less uncertainty than natural science has produced so far.20 They tend to use global average
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predictions (surface temperature, sea level rise, and so on) in their analyses and more or less assume linear trends all over the planet. This approach tends to produce win-lose scenarios, construed in economic terms.21 Economic thinking has led to distributive bargaining in the negotiations and diplomatic efforts in the FCCC and further protocols, while the problem of climate change might be more amenable to an integrative bargaining approach, especially in the face of continued scientific uncertainty. The results of my survey indicate that economics should not be a decisive factor in making global policy in this area. Cost-benefit analysis and discounting are not appropriate to apply to climate change issues, because the data to perform them accurately are not available. The surveyed sample on the other hand challenges economics to be active in delivering input on how to proceed once a decision has been made to act. Respondents felt that economic analysis can help clarify the costs associated with various emission reduction scenarios and determine which instruments22 should be used to meet emission reduction goals. An illustrative example of the role economic analysis should play in political processes is Title IV of the 1990 Amendments to the U.S. Clean Air Act. Economists23 suggested the use of emissions trading to achieve reductions in sulfur dioxide emissions from electric utilities; the suggestion made it possible to break a political deadlock of ten years duration. Economic analysis (marginal cost studies) had also a role in setting the annual reduction goal of about 10 million tons of sulfur dioxide. In conclusion, economics has a role to play but because of the limited information and enormous uncertainties involved in various environmental problems, global society cannot rely entirely on economic reasoning and data. Nevertheless, once an objective has been formulated through a political or negotiation process, economics can illuminate the most cost-effective ways to meet that objective.
Conclusions This chapter considered some theoretical ideas about the interaction of science, politics and economics and some recommendations for improvement were suggested. Survey data reflecting the views of natural scientists, largely from the industrialized countries were collected. The results demonstrate the need for change on a broad level in the interaction between science and politics and also in the way economic analysis is used. While this discussion focused on the case of climate change and the IPCC, the recommendations are not restricted to climate change negotiations. They apply
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equally to other negotiations involving the international and national environments and other science-intensive issues.
Appendix Text of Electronic Mail Survey 1. What do you consider as the most important impediment(s) to more profound international consensus/agreement on reduction targets for greenhouse gases on the global level? 2. Do you consider natural sciences or social sciences (in particular economics) more important in terms of delivering input for negotiations on climate change (please indicate selected option)? (a) NATURAL science MORE important than SOCIAL science (b) SOCIAL science MORE important than NATURAL science (c) NATURAL and SOCIAL science of equal importance 3. Do you consider the economic concept ‘Cost Benefit Analysis’ as an appropriate tool to use in climate change (yes or no)? 4. Do you consider the economic concept of ‘Discounting’ of future costs and benefits over generations as an appropriate tool to use in climate change (yes or no)? 5. Should economic analysis be applied to set the global CO2 concentration goals (yes or no)? 6. Should economic analysis be used to decide which instrument (tax, trading program etc.) to choose to attain defined greenhouse gas (reduction) targets (yes or no)? 7. Do you believe science is free of value judgments and political interest (yes or no)? 8. Do you believe scientific evidence used in environmental treaty negotiation in general is value-free and used in a non-political way (yes or no)? 9. Do you see a need for increased scientific cooperation and interdisciplinary work in particular between economics and natural scientists (yes or no)? 10. Do you think politicians and climate change negotiators take scientific evidence found by you and other IPCC members sufficiently into account in the negotiation process (yes or no)? 11. Do you think a more even distribution of scientific know-how around the globe instead of the current concentration of expertise in the industrialized world would simplify environmental treaty-making processes (yes or no)? 12. Do you think locating internationally renowned research institutes (for example, an IPCC technical support unit) in developing countries would
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13. 14. 15. 16.
promote global agreement in environmental-treaty making processes (yes or no)? What is your best guess about the share of IPCC scientists representing FCCC Annex II countries (in %)? Please indicate your nationality. Please indicate your scientific discipline. Would you like to receive the results of this survey (yes or no)?
Notes 1. The position of the United States underwent a change at the COP-2 meeting in Geneva in July 1996. The U.S. delegation called for the first time to seek firm reduction targets and timetables to be negotiated as early as at the COP-3 meeting in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. This fact does not substantially change the argument I make in this chapter. 2. For a detailed technical discussion of discounting in the context of climate change and some alternatives see Rothenberg (1993a, 1993b). 3. For a discussion of the reporting requirements in the context of European Union countries see Subak (1996). 4. I have tried to incorporate all the overlaps (people active in more than one Working Group or as both contributors and reviewers). Several overlaps have been detected—therefore numbers do not sum up in the total. Nevertheless the figures have to be viewed with a certain margin of error for which I take responsibility. 5. Developed countries listed in the FCCC in Annex II comprise basically all industrialized countries in Western Europe as well as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. 6. Transition economies are the countries listed in Annex I only but not in Annex II of the Convention. The group comprises the Russian Federation and the transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe. 7. This category is made up of IPCC representatives from Albania and Yugoslavia as well as people from international organizations (FAO, UNEP) and environmental groups that could not have been categorized in any other group because of a lack of data about nationality. 8. Various respondents did not stick to the proposed answer format of yes or no, so all answers that were not fully conclusive in one or another direction were coded as “yes, but / no, but.” 9. The total has been generated by weighing the answers: no with 1, yes with 2, and all other answers with 1.5. So the total is the arithmetic mean of the answers. Hence a number greater than 1.5 in the total column indicates a rather positive attitude of respondents to the factor in question, while a number smaller than 1.5 indicates a rather negative stance. 10. This value has been generated by multiplying the total values in each column with the respective weights, adding them all up and dividing them by the number of answers. 11. See note 10. 12. See note 10. 13. Young and Demko (1996) raise the issue in a general setting by stating that “the effectiveness of international environmental regimes depends . . . on coherent and widely shared premises or systems of thought about the problems to be solved and appropriate ways to solve them” (p. 233).
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14. Joint Implementation or Activities Implemented Jointly (AIJ) links reduction of carbon dioxide emissions to cost analysis. Emission reductions are cheapest in developing countries, so under this proposal one would see reductions in developing countries financed by companies from industrialized countries. A detailed discussion can be found in Jepma (1995). 15. A similar direction is expressed by Tickell (1996) who suggests “environment should be part of every discipline.” 16. German for “Wired Thinking.” 17. This is at least correct for Western Europe. 18. For an essay that highlights economists’ thinking very well see Schelling (1992). For an alternative view see Greer (1995). 19. Holdren does not blame economics but the media for this situation. 20. Holdren (1996) puts forward an interesting criticism of the cost-benefit analysis of Nordhaus (1994b). In short, he states that the analysis assumes linear responses and does not account for the possibility of a critical threshold of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, below which consequences of climate change might be less severe than above. So the Nordhaus analysis looks at only two options (stabilizing the atmospheric concentration or doing nothing) although there are more than two possibilities to consider. 21. Two examples: Areas closer to the poles that will receive more warming will gain in increased agricultural areas. Small islands in the Pacific might vanish because of a rising sea level. 22. For those interested in the discussion on possible instruments in climate change policy, see OECD (1993) as well as Barrett and others (1995). 23. The use of tradable sulfur permits was suggested by economists working for the Environmental Defense Fund.
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Y CHAPTER SEVEN
PROMOTING NORTH-SOUTH NGO COLLABORATION IN ENVIRONMENTAL NEGOTIATIONS The Role of U.S. Foundations Wendy Gay Vanasselt
he need to find new creative ways to forge stronger international environmental agreements grows more urgent with each passing year. Private U.S. philanthropies have both the potential and the means to help meet this need by strengthening the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in international environmental negotiations.1 Foundations can use their resources (both monetary and institutional) to facilitate alliances between Northern and Southern NGOs. Such an effort could help motivate political action, gain the support of influential institutions, and redefine issues in ways that mitigate ideological chasms between the developing and the developed world. Ambassador Razali Ismail, President of the General Assembly, declared to the United Nations Environment Program in February 1997 that “Agenda 21 . . . will only bring about sustainable equitable and ecologically-sound development if we can break out of the North-South schism . . . the real challenge is to reshape North-South relations” (Internet: Earth Negotiations Bulletin Home Page, Oct. 19, 1997). As nations map action plans to preserve the Earth’s environment, negotiations are routinely derailed by battles between the wealthy, industrialized countries of the North and the poor, less-developed countries of the South.2 Inequitable economic relations, the population-versus-consumption debate, conflicting notions of development and responsibility, and other conceptual and ideological differences can divide the negotiators even before the primary environmental issue at hand is addressed.
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Nongovernmental organizations have the potential to bridge this schism and transcend political challenges that governments find insurmountable. Crossborder NGO networks have opened up unprecedented ways for citizen groups to influence governments and mobilize international pressure for action. For example, Northern and Southern NGOs concerned with health established the International Baby Food Action Network and Health Action International to expose and combat unethical practices by manufacturers in their marketing of baby foods and pharmaceuticals. U.N. agencies introduced international codes of conduct and controls as a result (Clark, 1991, pp. 6–7). The combined efforts of NGOs in Brazil, the United States, Europe, and developing countries persuaded the World Bank to stop funding a road-building and resettlement scheme which was destroying a large tract of the Amazon (Clark, 1991, p. 7). During the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), cooperation yielded powerful lobbying and joint statements on key issues. Northern and Southern NGOs could have a profound impact on international environmental negotiations, but they lack the resources, technical support, and guidance necessary to work together, act strategically, and play a substantive role in the negotiations processes. Traditional sources of support for NGOs active in the international policy sphere are government agencies, international organizations, and multilateral donors. However, foundations are precisely the organizations that can—and should—help form and shape North-South NGO alliances.3 Foundations are free of dependency on other institutions, markets, or constituencies, and therefore can take a long view and bring a competent and objective approach to the search for solutions to complex problems. As financially secure intermediaries and activators for others, the impact of foundations can be powerful and long lasting. They can move comfortably between a wide variety of actors and serve as vehicles for institutions to work together in the negotiations process. Unfortunately, there is a gap between potentiality and actuality. Some of the largest U.S. philanthropies, notably Ford, MacArthur, W. Alton Jones, Kellogg, and Charles Stewart Mott foundations, the Rockefeller philanthropies, Pew Charitable Trusts, and the German Marshall Fund, are committed to finding creative solutions to global environmental problems and to fostering international dialogues. However, most provide occasional institutional support rather than developing multifaceted programs to deal with the substance of cross-boundary environmental issues. Few are actively shaping global alliances specifically to forge stronger international agreements. First, this chapter discusses the benefits of foundations playing a larger role in promoting North-South NGO cooperation on international environmental issues. Second, it outlines obstacles to their greater involvement. Third, it
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proposes several ways in which these influential institutions might facilitate better international standards for environmental behavior via the NGO sector.
The Merits of North-South NGO Alliances The discrepancy between the fixed geography of states and the nonterritorial nature of today’s environmental problems make solutions that are based on NorthSouth cooperation and NGOs increasingly important. Climate change, acid rain, and pressures on shared water resources are all examples of global commons issues that state sovereignty alone cannot alleviate. Correspondingly, nation-states may not be the natural problem-solving unit. As the desire to protect one’s own national environment fuels the diplomacy process, treaty making is often plagued by lowest-common-denominator and slowest-boat syndromes.4 Political borders and electorates motivate and define states’ concerns. Self-interest and protocol limit negotiators’ ability to create value and generate options and packages that increase benefits to all parties. Nations with different degrees of interest and power can complicate dispute resolution. Some conflicts simply are not ready for official negotiation due to previously troubled relationships between governments. As the Director of International Affairs at the Kettering Foundation observed, some conflicts involve “relationships that can only be changed when human beings probe the roots of conflict, understand the historical grievances that perpetuate animosity and begin to think creatively of how parties involved can overcome a violent past and move toward peaceful relationships” (quoted in Mawlawi, 1993, pp. 26–27). Unlike official government negotiators, NGOs may share dedication to goals that transcend narrow national or sectoral interests and the historically adversarial North-South relations. NGOs may be better able to understand and respect each other’s political, economic, and cultural contexts and institutional constraints. For example, NGO alliances have been able to reduce pesticide hazards and promote sustainable agriculture alternatives, despite the fact that many Northern countries are major pesticide exporters and Southern countries provide a substantial and growing pesticide market. Another advantage is that many NGOs are driven by missions based on the concepts of openness to mutual learning; respect and equality; a commitment to collaboration; and transparency or reciprocal accountability. And, of course, NGOs are increasingly influential. For example, NGO pressure forced the United States and Mexico to include environmental and labor concerns in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (Mathews, 1997, p. 11). NGOs’ influence reaches behind other states’ borders, forcing governments
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to concern themselves more than ever with public opinion in other countries, even on matters that have traditionally been handled strictly between governments. Issues that would reap substantial benefits from North-South NGO cooperation include “flow of resources” questions (such as attempts to address the consumption-versus-population debate through international regimes) and negotiations involving very different costs and stakes for industrialized and industrializing countries (climate change, forestry, intellectual property rights). Issues such as nuclear weapons and radioactive sitings, in which Northern states are perceived as having centralized power, also polarize discussions among nation- states and might advance further and faster if NGOs formed constructive alliances.
The Ideal NGO Alliance Global North-South linkages could tremendously leverage NGOs’ clout and potential to do good in the international policy arena. Ideally, foundations would enhance NGOs’ ability to arrive at consensus among themselves prior to involvement with the treaty makers and to bolster the substantive recommendations provided by NGOs during the negotiation process. “Nothing is worse for negotiators,” says Charles H.W. Foster, former president of the W. Alton Jones Foundation, “than having their special interests in disarray at the bargaining table” (personal communication, Nov. 8, 1997). Allied North-South NGOs can have a heightened ability to identify common needs, unify platforms around shared ideology, carry out valuable issue research, disseminate the findings effectively, and democratize information. The alliance could also give NGOs a stronger voice in the public and governmental arenas. Armed with a united message and innovative ideas, NGOs could gain greater acceptance and respect for their place at decision-making forums. Foundations should not provide grants simply to facilitate the physical presence of NGOs at working groups and treaty-making sessions. Nor should foundations build or support an alliance that only has the goal of protesting, posturing, and adding more rhetoric and obfuscation to the negotiators’ work. Sometimes united opposition (to a lowest-common-denominator outcome, for example) may be essential, but confrontation should not be the dominating purpose of the alliance. As Foster commented, “The current practice of ‘them and us’ as illustrated by the ‘shadow’ NGO event at Rio is hardly an approach foundations should be asked to encourage” (personal communication, Nov. 8, 1997). There are several promising models of North-South cooperation and dialogues. The Keystone International Dialogue Series on Plant Genetic Resources, conducted under wholly independent NGO auspices, built consensus among all
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concerned parties (WRI, IUCN, UNEP, 1992, p. 167). Although not limited to NGOs, the dialogues held under the auspices of the Global Biodiversity Forum present a model based in part on the premise that a successful Biodiversity Convention requires broad-based discussion of key issues; consensus was sought but not forced (WRI, 1994, p. 162). The Philippine Development Forum, a network of U.S.-based individuals and organizations, works in partnership with a broad range of Philippine NGOs to promote awareness and facilitate dialogue on equitable and sustainable development in the Philippines. NGOs from the North and South participate as equals, and the network links groups across the environmental, development, religious, and human rights communities (WRI, IUCN, UNEP, 1992, p. 166).
Obstacles to Building North-South NGO Alliances Many worldwide NGO alliances form gradually and haphazardly. In a 1994 paper, Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink note that international issue networks often emerge when “a large number of differently situated international and domestic NGOs become acquainted over a considerable period of time, and develop similar or at least interrelated world views. When the more visionary [ participants] proposed strategies to transform intractable problems into ones amenable to political action, this potential transformed into an issue network” (Keck and Sikkink, 1994, p. 150). Often the networks emerge from conferences in which NGOs are pressuring for an international forum. The Philippine Development Forum, for example, started as a one-time event and eventually grew into an ongoing network. While gradual informal cooperation can be beneficial, a proactive, strategic, sustained alliance-building effort leading up to the formal negotiations of a global environmental issue holds greater potential. However, such coordinated, wellprepared partnerships with specific targets, goals, and deadlines will not form without financial and institutional support. Many of the same problems that hampered meaningful NGO interaction during UNCED can frustrate North-South coalition building. In Rio, participants found that they needed designated meeting spaces; mechanisms and incentives for regular discussions; interpretation services; better information dissemination systems; travel funds; and training on how to be effective advocates and negotiators. Assistance working with those who represented different cultures was also an important factor (Kakabadse and Burns, 1994). Another challenge to a North-South NGO collaboration is that the relationship must overcome some mistrust and paternalism; Northern NGOs can fall into the trap of preaching to their Southern counterparts. In the same vein,
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effective partnerships may require that NGOs from both sides of the divide alter their internal structures to replicate the values they espouse, think about whom they represent, and commit to contributing to both national and international agendas. NGOs also need to recognize heterogeneous cultures and respect different participatory styles. Divergent interests and views about environmental issues complicate the problems faced in building genuine partnerships within the North and South. Northern NGOs are not homogeneous, nor are Southern NGOs a like-minded contingent; the task is greater than simply bringing the two sides together. NGOs spring from different backgrounds and traditions and may operate with very different mentalities. In Japan, for example, many modern NGOs emerge from a tradition of antigovernment activity, while in some Catholic countries such as Italy voluntary activity has grown almost entirely out of the church and from an alternative, antistatist mentality, to which leftist antigovernment views were later added (Smillie, 1993, p. 161). Plus, there are groups on both sides with sympathy toward the other. Fortunately, those cross-regional sympathies are at least as promising as the sometimes splintered interests within the North and South are problematic.
The Philanthropic Community’s Role A foundation is a marketplace for information and ideas. Foundation officers have the ability to act upon opportunities that can benefit numerous groups in the environmental field. They are also in a unique position to assemble advisors, commission research, and attract the cooperation of other relevant institutions (Nielsen, 1985, p. 428). Theodore Smith, Executive Director of The Kendall Foundation, reiterated that foundations’ special strength lies in convening people on neutral territory (personal communication, Nov. 14, 1997). However, he questioned how often, and under what circumstances, foundations do take on a convening role with regard to global environmental policies, negotiations, and NGOs, and what level of consistent long-term support they provide. Several foundations, including the Ford, MacArthur, Kellogg, Rockefeller, and Charles Stewart Mott foundations, have devoted many years and substantial resources to international environmental issues, cooperation, and institutional capacity building.5 For example, the Rockefeller philanthropies’ programs emphasize global interdependence and constitute “a commitment to help define and pursue a path toward environmentally sustainable development consistent with individual rights and a more equitable sharing of the world’s resources.”
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A principal part of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s grant-making program is its One World theme, consisting of two major components: globally-sustainable resource use and world security. The fund also emphasizes support for “a vital nonprofit sector, both nationally and internationally.” Similarly, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation’s Special Initiatives Program gives priority to projects that “test or apply innovative consensus-building approaches to solving environmental problems . . . and address urgent and time-specific environmental threats or opportunities, especially those related to national or global policies.” Some of the major forces in environmental philanthropy care deeply about particular issues. The Pew Charitable Trusts promotes public policies that protect the global atmosphere, reduce the production and use of highly persistent toxic chemicals, and protect forests and marine resources. The W. Alton Jones Foundation, a veteran player in the international environment field, has focused on biodiversity. Many of these foundations’ grants have an element of convening and networking NGOs; some offer useful models that could be expanded globally to benefit negotiations. For example, in 1997 the Rockefeller Brothers Fund promoted the exchange of information among NGOs in Eastern and Central Europe and the Newly Independent States via a grant to Voice International. The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation has funded a project on cross-border cooperation for toxic pollution prevention and control operated by the Texas Center for Policy Studies, which seeks to reinforce ties between citizen’s organizations on either side of the border. As a first step, the Center established a binational network on the environment. Such cross-border initiatives might be scaled up to a multiregional and global level, with a focus on negotiations and the provision of more strategic institutional support. Other relevant grants and program activities emphasize institutional and individual development to benefit environmental issues worldwide. An example is The Rockefeller Foundation’s Leadership for Environment and Development Program which brings together individuals from academia, media, government, and nongovernmental organizations in a global forum for 16 weeks of multidisciplinary and multisectoral training in sustainable development problem diagnosis and integrated problem solving. Graduates of the program remain linked in an ongoing dialogue via a global electronic information network. Foundations have brought NGOs together around specific negotiations events such as the Rio Earth Summit and the Cairo Conference on Population. Both the Ford and Rockefeller foundations funded travel costs to ensure the attendance of Third World NGO representatives at United Nation preparatory meetings and the planning sessions for Rio. Ford Foundation funding enabled women’s groups in the United States, Africa, Asia, and Latin America to prepare for and attend the Beijing Conference, and also supported media training and publication
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and dissemination of press materials. The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation funded NGO participation in the Trade and Environment Committee meetings of the World Trade Organization. Sometimes foundations have supported issue-specific projects tangentially related to negotiations. For example, the W. Alton Jones Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund provided support for the World Resources Institute’s research and policy analyses on climate change and environmentally beneficial taxes— grants which included the participation of WRI associates on negotiations working group panels. Another example is the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation’s provision of pass-through funds to the Center for International Environmental Law, enabling it to make mini-grants to Chilean organizations working on environmental issues related to free trade negotiations and the NAFTA. The above overview of foundation activities related to international environmental issues and negotiations is not based on a year-by-year assessment of grants made by all the major foundations. However, a few generalizations can be made about current grant making in this area. First, foundations most often convene people and NGOs in situations that do not involve differing points of view. As Theodore Smith noted, “The most typical situation is one in which the foundation knows that the NGOs share common ground, so they bring them together to strategize on how to beat the other guys” (personal communication, Nov. 14, 1997). He suspects that a far less likely meeting would be one in which NGOs with very different agendas were encouraged and supported in a conference, an element of the alliances proposed in this chapter. Second, the foundations tend to convene NGOs on a relatively small scale. They may provide grants to make possible a one-time meeting or conference, or to bring NGO representatives to a specific event. The geographic focus is also relatively narrow. As foundations often focus their programmatic resources on a select area of the world (for example, the German Marshall Fund mainly addresses environment and trade issues of importance to the United States and Europe), they may prefer to convene and assist communications and alliances between NGOs just in that region. Third, the foundations mainly provide money. Their involvement is limited to funding initiatives, not to planning, networking, and serving as a source of institutional guidance.
Obstacles to a Larger Foundation Role The outcome of an international negotiation can dramatically affect foundations’ success at promoting global sustainable development and equity. Therefore, one might expect foundations to be eager to work in this area. Yet relative to their total
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annual grant making, they are mainly nibbling at, rather than biting into the problems detailed here. Why? First, foundations will be unlikely to launch an alliance-building effort without being fully convinced by a plan that ensures that their participation can make a difference. Funding global alliance-building and negotiations work requires knowledge of an enormous range of issues (political, economic, management, enforcement, and cultural) in addition to the primary environmental problem. While the Ford Foundation has a staff of more than 100 people, philanthropies with a staff of only several individuals are the norm, making it quite a daunting task to build the staff and board capacity needed to feel comfortable funding or designing a complex new program of work. Furthermore, foundations may not recognize the substantive contributions that NGOs can make to negotiations, nor the merits of North-South linkages. Consider, too, the open-ended nature of supporting NGO work on negotiations. The time frame of commitment needed on the part of a foundation could be very long—years or even decades. Yet, as Janet Maughan, former Ford Foundation program officer observed, many funders operate on a cycle that is not appropriate to building collaborative efforts. “The one-year grant is a no-brainer,” she said (quoted in Cestero and Snow, 1997, p. 47). An example of this is that while foundations have funded climate change activities for years, and the climate change negotiations are far from over, foundations are now beginning to lose interest, perhaps seeking a trendier issue. Another negative from a foundation’s perspective is that making these alliances work could require as much technical and strategic support (setting up technology systems, organizing meetings, setting goals and strategy) as financial. Many foundations prefer programs that are relatively simple to conceive and carry out, requiring relatively limited depth of involvement. There are exceptions: for example, the Ford Foundation often sees problems in more comprehensive contextual terms, and as such is willing to fund programs that embrace many issues and invest substantial staff time and money in nurturing and initiating projects. Ford also accepts “controversy, criticism, and relatively high failure rates” (Nielsen, 1985, p. 422). Foundations also like quantifiable results and the means with which to gauge their impact. This may be incompatible with the concept of alliance building around environmental negotiations.6 For example, even if a convention yields an agreement, it will be difficult to assess the degree of impact of an NGO alliance. Assume that a foundation has expertise on a global environmental problem and is not intimidated by the complexities of the negotiations process. It might still be wrong to assume that a foundation has a position or a desired outcome in mind. For example, it is questionable that the Ford Foundation has an official
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position on the outcome of the climate change negotiations. Perhaps a few program officers do, but a shared staff and board vision is highly improbable. Without a position around which to structure a grant or resource-building program, there may be less motivation to launch a new program of work, such as bringing Northern and Southern NGOs together. Foundations generally fund activities and groups to get an outcome, not just to perpetuate a process. Finally, some foundations may be averse to taking actions that could be perceived as political. Since the 1960s, when there was a sustained Congressional attack on private foundations (Congress questioned their power and influence, a process which culminated in the 1969 Tax Reform Act), many foundations have feared taking too extreme a role in social activism and advocacy. And, as taxexempt public charities, they are barred by law from undertaking partisan activities.
Recommendations: New Foundation Approaches Franklin Thomas, former President of the Ford Foundation, said “I think of foundations as the research and development arm of a society. We’re the parts of the society that ought to be taking risks, developing new ideas, backing innovative people and institutions who are pushing new ideas, ideas that are designed to remove inequities, increase opportunities, and lead towards more harmonious relations, whether interpersonal or intergovernmental or globally” (Ford Foundation Home Page, Nov. 17, 1997). Thomas’s vision has not been fully recognized when applied to the area of international environmental negotiations because of some of the aforementioned challenges. The following strategies could bring us closer to a model for change that could ultimately bring about better decisions and action on global environmental problems. While currently funded efforts (mainly conferences, travel funds for NGOs, and research and policy analyses) are tremendously valuable, a more strategic and comprehensive philanthropic effort could yield effective alliances with defined goals and the ability to play a substantive role in the negotiations process.
Program of Research and Guidance for Foundations If, as Charles Foster states, the primary problem for a foundation lies in the numerous “unknowns” and the open-ended nature of funding NGO alliances for negotiations, one initial step might be to fund a research program on the merits of NGO
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participation in the negotiating processes generally, and North-South collaboration specifically. Case studies analyzing the outcomes of attempted North-South alliances and assessing what factors made (or failed to make) the relationship work could be the focus of this program. This effort, funded, managed, and published by a foundation or philanthropic “umbrella” group such as the Council on Foundations or the Environmental Grantmakers Association, could produce guidelines for grantmaking institutions interested in expanding or launching work in this area. The Council on Foundations may be a particularly promising vehicle for such an effort. Its “International Program” seeks to extend the field of international philanthropy and increase its effectiveness. One of its stated goals is to assist grant makers in practicing effective grant making across national borders through the provision of papers, recommendations, and conferences. Ideas, lessons, and structures might also be extrapolated from the Consultative Group on Biodiversity, which works with about 45 member foundations, 20 of which provide funds for conservation and development. (The group conducts educational seminars for funders who are trying to help preserve biodiversity, and many of the funders are beginning to embrace collaborative approaches.) This approach might be a valuable launching point for larger efforts. It certainly would be a specific project with a specific outcome, underway for a limited period of time, making it palatable to the funding community. However, while appealing in theory, in practice case studies and guidelines may not be a very effective way to influence foundation policy, let alone serve as a lever for change. Considering the need to move foundations to action, case studies may not catch the funding community’s attention or spur an investment of time and resources in negotiations alliances on a broad scale.
Emphasize North-South Links in Current Grants Because foundations already provide millions of dollars annually for international environmental efforts, they have significant influence over thousands of NGOs in both the North and the South. Rather than investing millions more in a new effort to build alliances, one easy solution might be to make a North-South link a top priority of projects proposed by the majority of their grantees. For example, the Ford Foundation could decide that a U.S. NGO proposing to research climate change policies might only qualify for funding if has research partners from a Southern country. However, this recommendation is only a small step and has several drawbacks. First, most of the major foundations already emphasize collaboration with NGOs in developing countries, and many NGOs already seek Southern or Northern
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partners as a way to leverage their impact. Second, emphasizing collaboration among two or three parties does not equate to, or lead to, a strategic consensusbuilding effort focused on producing solutions at negotiations conferences. Third, requiring NGOs to have several Southern or Northern partners as a precondition of a grant begins to overstep the bounds of fairness in capitalizing on foundation influence and could weaken the NGOs’ work in the process. As foundations generally receive many more requests for money than they can support, environmental groups may be tempted to modify their agendas too far to please the big funders who are demanding the formation of alliances. Or, the NGOs may simply form alliances in name only with little substantive action. Taken to the extreme, this approach could also create a select group of haves—big national and international groups that have the greatest ability to work transnationally— and have-nots—small groups that cannot break into the big funding sources because of stringent collaboration criteria.
A Foundation-Initiated Pilot Alliance A bold new approach would be for foundations to design jointly a system of test NGO interactions and networks around a negotiation in which overcoming the North-South divide will be key to achieving a sound, widely accepted agreement. This test case might be one in which NGOs already have some ability to deal with the problem collaboratively and to articulate shared strategies; such an advantage might increase the likelihood of initial success and project replicability. (The counterargument in favor of choosing an issue with larger NGO disagreement also has merit: it might be more meaningful for the purposes of learning.) A valuable test case for a foundation-crafted NGO linkage might focus on reducing unsustainable consumption patterns and related environmental degradation, a topic worthy of international attention and in need of creative approaches to negotiation. Consumption is a politically charged issue, divided along NorthSouth lines. UNCED acknowledged unsustainable consumption patterns in the North as a major threat to global development; meanwhile, fearful that achieving changes in consumption patterns will require a major international effort to redistribute the world’s resources, the North cites the potentially huge consumption demands in the South due to its high population growth rates. While politicians and decision makers seem to agree that changes are needed, they also seem to lack the political will to implement them. The various negotiations on major issues such as the debt burden of countries in the South and reforms in the international trade system have not changed the course of development that steadily widens the gap between the North and the South.
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Clearly NGOs will have an important role to play in the process of establishing an international action plan. NGOs worldwide have already challenged unsustainable development and launched numerous initiatives aimed at changing consumption patterns, but the need for coordinated action is paramount. Many environmental organizations in the North have focused narrowly on environmental protection without linking it to consumption patterns and development problems in the South, or have relied heavily on the assumption that technological innovations will make growth possible within acceptable environmental limits. NGOs in the South have increasingly challenged such a perspective and demanded that the unequal distribution of resources and the harmful effects of overconsumption be given more attention. To help NGOs find common ground and provide creative shared solutions to address this issue globally, a group of four to six foundations might pool funds for a three-year Consumption Negotiations Program. With contributions from each of $2–3 million a year, for a total of $12–18 million annually, a multifaceted, wellcoordinated effort would be possible. This is not an unrealistic proposal; the Ford Foundation’s endowment is more than $7 billion, and in 1995 alone, Ford awarded almost $300 million in grants (NewsHour Online Home Page, April 24, 1996). The MacArthur Foundation grants approximately $140 million annually, and the Rockefeller Foundation $100 million (Rockefeller and MacArthur foundation Home Pages, Nov. 16, 1997). An alliance and consensus-building effort could be managed under the auspices of a specially created formal or informal institutional or organizational entity, or an existing one. If the choice is to establish a new entity to manage the process, foundations should provide sufficient funds to support a few part-time staff people, perhaps one from each foundation, who can facilitate this effort. They would plan the alliance’s agenda, coordinate, network, and select participants, set meetings, mediate disputes, and design communication technologies and systems. A rough model, on a national scale, is the Energy Foundation, which was created in 1991 by the staffs and boards of the MacArthur Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Joyce-Mertz Gilmore Foundation. Its mission is to assist the United States transition to a sustainable energy future. It serves primarily as a grant maker, but also convenes workshops, commissions papers, and takes other direct initiatives. The foundation has an annual budget of $11.7 million a year (Energy Foundation Home Page, March 4, 1998). Alternatively, a group of foundations could pool funds, then funnel them through an existing, relatively formal, NGO association to manage and coordinate the day-to-day work. For example, the Environmental Liaison Centre or the Center for Our Common Future might facilitate the dialogues and consensus building process. The Keystone Center, known for being a neutral NGO, with
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expertise in environmental negotiations, might also be a good choice to convene and manage the process and report to the foundations. Such an approach would reduce the need for foundation staff experience and high management and time commitments, making the project less demanding of the foundations. It would speak to the fact that in the best partnerships, the community itself—in this case the NGOs—makes the basic decisions. The removal of outside leadership and bureaucracy may create a greater sense of NGO investment and concern. Using a network as the coordinating body also alleviates the danger that some NGOs will feel strong-armed by funders into participating, so as not to jeopardize their chances of receiving grants for other projects. The negative side of using existing networks is that the foundations can exercise less control and will have to respect the umbrella NGO’s agenda. Another concern is that a non-foundation coordinator may tend to select certain kinds of NGOs (large, national or small, grassroots) with whom it has the best relationships and shares similar views, rather than a broad mix. It also may lack the clout needed to secure participants and the skills necessary to nurture a process. However, foundation staff members have the advantage of trafficking in some of the best ideas, so they can easily offer knowledge and contacts, making them some of the best people to bring a broad vision to the alliance-building effort. Another option is to have a North-South alliance-building effort carried out under the United Nations (for example through the United Nations NonGovernmental Liaison Service) or multilateral donors, rather than foundation auspices. There are several problems with this. One is that there is a perception that U.N. organizations are plagued by bureaucracy, which may make NGOs reluctant to participate in a U.N.-managed alliance. Second, independent foundations have the integrity, autonomy, and freedom to take advocacy positions, but the United Nations does not. Third, neither multilateral donors nor the United Nations are likely to be creative risk-takers, which could be important—particularly if there is a need to reshape or redirect the effort midstream to maximize its likelihood of success. (One way to get the advantages offered by both kinds of institutions might be to have Ted Turner’s new foundation, funded with $100 million a year for ten years and intended to benefit the United Nations, organize and manage a North-South NGO alliance-building process.) The question becomes which structural entity can most effectively coordinate the partnership. The entity must be able to provide supportive leadership and spark motivation; have strong capacity to facilitate communication; gain mutual trust; and resolve tensions through negotiation based on sensitivity to partners’ interests. No matter how administered, the foundations should commit to a program of multiyear support. This should not be an ad hoc alliance pulled together and
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active only in the months shortly before formal negotiations. An example of the impacts possible with advance planning, including an early start at developing strategies and identifying stakeholders, is the Center for International Environmental Law’s help in organizing a coalition of island states prior to the climate change negotiations. The Center provided the coalition with legal and scientific support and technical and economic resources, enabling participants to arrive at meetings prepared to develop common positions and strategies (McMahon, 1993). By contrast, there was little coordination among the environmental NGOs as a whole prior to and between the first climate change convention negotiation sessions. Some meetings, at which NGOs hastily agreed upon strategies, were scheduled a day before sessions began. As a result, environmental NGO strategies were de facto led by the government agenda and their influence on the final treaty was minimal (McMahon, 1993). Convening a series of meetings in different parts of the world for groups of NGOs from the North and South is an essential part of this recommendation. These meetings might first be coordinated on a loose regional basis, in groups representing less than a dozen countries. However, unlike the original divisions in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (four groups with limited diversity; for example, one was Latin America, another combined Western Europe, North America, and Japan) each of the groups in this approach will have a NorthSouth balance, and balance in terms of national and grassroots representation. Half a dozen regional groups could each meet physically perhaps three times in the first year of work, with increasing face-to-face interaction closer to target negotiation dates. Each group might be led by two individuals from the region, one from a Northern and one from a Southern NGO. Facilitators and translators should be provided at meetings, as well as training in constructive participation and effective advocacy. Two important elements of the NGO mix will be regional diversity and the commitment of participants to at least a three-year period of work. This would be a chance to build relationships in a nonadversarial climate, without financial constraints severely limiting who can participate. The idea behind remaining small and regional in the first year would be to keep core groups from becoming unmanageable and to find some common ground and strategies. This would prevent situations like the UNCED PrepCom meetings, of which participants noted that “the coordination and focus of environmental NGO lobbying became progressively worse as the numbers of NGOs increased” and that by the fourth meeting their “numbers were unmanageable, hampering agreement on almost any issue” (McMahon, 1993). Another important element of this new foundation approach would be the provision of communications technology to all alliance members. Technology is
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one of the reasons for NGOs’ new clout in the national and international arenas. It allows for fast information sharing, which, in turn, binds network members together and is essential for effectiveness. For example, the Internet might be used to distribute ideas and meet on-line between official meetings. It would also provide a way to share updates with NGOs that are not part of the official alliance, but are interested in and able to aid the alliance’s work. Useful models already exist. Many foundations are already helping nonprofits use technology as a powerfully organizing force for groups scattered around the globe. For example, a consortium of groups, including the Council on Foundations and the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers, has devised a plan to link 75,000 nonprofits using video conferences, the Internet, and other tools. This work is intended to improve charities’ ability to share information and respond quickly to public policy proposals that could affect them and the people they serve (Hall, 1996, p. 9). Another model is the Sacred Earth Network’s Environmental Telecommunication Project, a computer network of more than 400 environmentalists spanning more than 100 cities in the former Soviet republics (Sacred Earth Network Home Page, March 4, 1998). Other valuable ideas which could be elements of this approach might be culled from the MacArthur Foundation’s International Governance and Civil Society Program which provided funding for the Common Security Forum, a research network of scholars and policy advisors exploring new ways of thinking about global security. From the foundations’ perspective, one advantage of a North-South NGO alliance and consensus-building effort is that it need not yield a specific outcome. The foundations do not have to establish that they will gain a commitment from all NGOs to push for proposal x or idea y to achieve position z. Rather, the intent would be to help NGO members discuss common issues and areas in which interests diverge, and to organize themselves through a common spokesperson. This approach might also encourage the participation of Southern NGOs; presenting the alliance-building effort as a process in which foundations have no hand in directing participants to a certain conclusion would help alleviate possible suspicions that a project funded by a Northern foundation might have a Northern bias. Admittedly, any foundation effort to facilitate alliances between Northern and Southern NGOs around negotiations will be difficult to evaluate. The problem is that a network is not a single actor, but a multiple actor, making its influence particularly difficult to trace (Keck and Sikkink, 1994, p. 20). Nevertheless, some short-term measures of success are available, including whether NGOs gain a heightened ability to play a constructive rather than purely confrontational role (for example, by presenting North-South proposals and research to the official participants) and the sustainability of an alliance over a multiyear period. Other evaluations could come from the NGO participants, who could reflect on lessons
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learned from their experience and on what contacts and ideas they are still utilizing in other negotiations and policy efforts. A drawback to this whole recommendation is the large demand, beyond funding, that it places on foundations. While it capitalizes on foundations’ stature and ability to bring people to the table, to some degree it borders on telling NGOs how to do their work. Says Steve Toben of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, “There’s a danger of meddling too much, but there’s a power that, appropriately exercised, can be constructive. And we can provide resources. First and foremost, our job is to dispense resources. We can’t let ourselves get overly involved. I don’t think that’s healthy” (Cestero and Snow, 1997).
Conclusions This chapter has presented three recommendations for ways that foundations could help spark and fuel an organized and cohesive network of Northern and Southern NGOs. No doubt there are many more ways that foundations could support and motivate such an alliance. The key point is that, with adequate and strategic assistance, there is a tremendous opportunity to apply NGOs’ and foundations’ special abilities and knowledge to the search for solutions to global environmental disputes, and to achieve stronger international agreements in the long run. Ideally, a foundation-sponsored North-South alliance would achieve broad consensus and creative proposals for solutions to the most pressing global environmental issues. However, even if an alliance did not achieve a single coherent position at the end of the project, or if targeted negotiations stalled or failed to achieve the desired environmental agreement, long-lasting benefits are still possible. First, any consensus-building effort that focuses on networking also will yield institutional capacity for NGOs—capacity that will serve them well in their work on other issues. Second, southern NGOs will be strengthened and legitimized, and the process will help meet their long-standing desire for informational and technical resources. Third, South-South cooperation could be an auxiliary benefit. Fourth, if NGOs can play even a small role in reshaping North-South relations, it might make the next negotiations more successful. Finally, carving a larger role for foundations in networking North-South NGOs around global environmental issues would be timely. It could translate the currently popular concept of “civil investing” to the international arena. Gayle Williams Donnelly, Executive Director of the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, provides a good definition of civil investing: “the recognition that foundations have the capacity to convene people who are doing civic work in their communities so that they may learn from each other and support each other” (quoted in Zehr,
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1996, p. 22). However, as Charles Hamilton, Director of the J. M. Kaplan Fund also notes, civil investing “involves the realization that philanthropy, individuals, and communities have the power to make things work. Government can’t do everything” (Zehr, 1996, p. 22). That logic is applicable to the environmental negotiations arena, too.
Notes 1. In this chapter, nongovernmental organization or NGO refers to the private nonprofit sector, including grassroots, national, and international organizations. Philanthropies refers specifically to the subset of the NGO sector whose primary activity is to provide funding to achieve their programmatic goals. 2. For a good explanation of the concept of the North-South divide, see Adil Najam “International Environmental Negotiation: A Strategy for the South,” (Chapter Three in this volume). 3. The U.S. foundations need to take the lead. Many already support NGOs worldwide, and the United States is particularly well endowed with foundations. 4. For a more detailed discussion of these syndromes, see Peter Sand, World Resources (1990). 5. All the examples of foundation programs and grants cited in this section were culled from annual reports, the foundations’ Internet web pages, and personal knowledge. 6. Not all foundation grants adhere to this logic; the willingness of foundations to fund travel costs for NGO representatives to attend U.N. meetings certainly does not guarantee a quantifiable success. However, such grants are usually relatively small, short-term financial commitments —quite different from the kind needed for large-scale alliance building.
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Y CHAPTER EIGHT
THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES Newspaper Coverage in Four Countries Anja Kollmuss
he media plays a crucial role in the political process. It informs and educates the public and policy makers about the issues and serves in many instances as an intermediary between scientists and policy makers. The media also influences the international environmental treaty-making system. By deciding which issues get covered and which are omitted, the media not only shapes the way an issue is perceived, but also has considerable influence over the way priorities are set. The first two parts of this chapter examine the newspaper coverage of climate change in four different countries. The last part of the chapter explores how media coverage of climate change in particular and environmental issues in general could be improved. In the course of this research several points became increasingly clear:
T
• The amount of coverage varies greatly from country to country. The United Kingdom has almost twice as much coverage on the issue as Germany and the United States. • The science of climate change is portrayed, especially in more conservative newspapers, as a debate between environmentalists and climate skeptics. • Many scientific articles do not handle scientific uncertainty well. Issues are usually not put into context and the scientific uncertainty is either not mentioned at all or portrayed as a two-sided argument between skeptics and believers.
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• Conservative newspapers in all examined countries quote climate skeptics more frequently and are more hesitant to acknowledge climate change as being a serious problem. • The politics of climate change (that is the international negotiations) are covered insufficiently or not at all. • Climate change articles rarely ever make the front page (8 out of 176 articles). • Articles about mitigation and adaptation strategies are rare but more frequent in left-leaning newspapers. • Issues of equity are only mentioned in the two most liberal newspapers (the Guardian, Tages–Zeitung). • Feature articles are very rare (only 3 out of 176 articles). • Most articles are written following the release of a new study or an event (political meeting, conference, etc.). • The tone of newspaper coverage varies greatly between liberal and conservative newspapers. • Liberal newspapers tend to openly advocate taking action on climate change, whereas conservative newspapers use seemingly more neutral, dispassionate language. • The distinction between news articles and opinion pieces is more blurred in European newspapers, especially the more liberal ones.
Design and Scope of the Analysis The study includes an in-depth content analysis of the media coverage of climate change issues during a period of six months (9/7/99–3/7/00). This is a somewhat arbitrary period that was chosen because it is very recent and because during that period the “Parties to the Conference” met in Bonn. Newspaper coverage in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and India was analyzed using LexisNexis. Three newspapers were chosen for each country. Each newspaper was among the most important in its country and represented a broad political spectrum to the best degree possible. It is important to point out that this study can only show tendencies. It does not try to attempt to give a full portrayal of the media coverage in each of the examined countries. Also, the scales developed to code the newspaper articles are to some extent subjective. If this were to be a truly scientific study, several people would have had to code the newspaper articles and average their scores to yield a final figure.
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The study focuses on what the British Audit Bureau of Circulations calls National Morning Quality: serious, non-tabloid newspapers. It would be interesting to examine the newspapers categorized as “National Morning Popular” since these newspapers reach audiences four to ten times larger than the more sophisticated newspapers (for example the British Sun has a circulation of 3.6 million compared to 0.4 million for the Guardian). The United States The United States is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases (1.45 billion tons of Carbon per year) and has also the highest per capita emissions (5.4 tons of Carbon per year). The United States has ratified the U.N. Convention on Climate Change and has signed but not ratified the Kyoto protocol. Under the Kyoto agreement, the United States would have to cut its emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels. Yet the U.S. Senate, dominated by Republicans, has been staunchly opposed to the implementation of the Kyoto agreement. The Clinton administration has expressed repeated concern about the threat of climate change but has not taken any strong actions. U.S. greenhouse gases emissions have been steadily increasing and are now, according to the U.S. EPA, 11.5 percent higher than in 1990. The United States is part of the Umbrella Group of industrialized countries that has been pushing for the economic mechanisms that include emissions trading (ET), joint implementation ( JI), and the clean development mechanism (CDM). These three emissions trading schemes would allow a nation to buy greenhouse gases reductions from other countries or to pay for emissions reductions that are realized in other nations. The rationale behind these trading mechanisms is that they are more cost effective. Developing countries, and to some extent the EU, have been worried that these mechanisms might be misused by rich countries (that is, the United States) as a way to avoid domestic action. The newspapers that have been studied for the United States include the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. All three newspapers are centrist and do not represent a wide political spectrum.1 The New York Times is without question the most important and influential newspaper in the United States. Its focus is very general. Politically, the New York Times has become more conservative during the last decade. The Washington Post has a strong focus on politics. The Los Angeles Times is the largest newspaper in California. Like the New York Times, it is a general newspaper without a specific focus. To ensure a good geographical distribution, I would have liked to include the Chicago Tribune, a paper from the midwest. However, it was not available on LexisNexis nor was the very influential national daily, the Wall Street Journal. It is difficult and somewhat subjective to rank the three papers on a political scale. Politically, there is not much
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difference between them. Yet, I ranked the New York Times as the most conservative, followed by the Washington Post, and third, the Los Angeles Times. The United Kingdom The United Kingdom emits 0.15 billion tons of Carbon per year (2.6 tons of Carbon per capita, per year.) As has the United States, the United Kingdom has ratified the U.N. Convention on Climate Change and signed the Kyoto agreement but not yet ratified it. Under the Kyoto agreement, the United Kingdom would have to lower its greenhouse gas emissions 12 percent below 1990 levels. The United Kingdom currently has a social-democrat majority in the government. The government had announced last year that it would set a goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels. The government introduced a climate change levy and some other measures to meet that goal. Yet, under considerable pressure from industry, it looks now like the government will reduce its 20 percent commitment to a 20 percent reduction goal. Nevertheless, political opposition to the Kyoto agreement seems much less strong than in the United States. There is more a discussion about how than should we or should we not. The United Kingdom and Germany are part of the European Union, which has been pushing for limitations on how much emission reduction a country can buy from other nations. The European Union has also been pushing for the Kyoto ratification by 2002. In April of 2000, a meeting of the environmental ministers from the world’s eight leading industrialized nations ended without an agreement on a deadline for ratifying the Kyoto agreement. The European Union and Japan want the treaty ratified by 2002, while the US and Canada resisted any specific timeframe for ratification. The British newspapers included in this study include the Guardian (including the Sunday Observer, owned by the Guardian), The Times (including Sunday Times, which might be described politically as center right), the Daily Telegraph (including the Sunday Telegraph). The Guardian defines itself as “radical, left of centre.” It is one of the most influential newspapers in the UK. The Times is centrist whereas the Daily Telegraph is clearly conservative. Germany Germany emits 0.45 billion tons of Carbon per year (2.9 tons of Carbon per capita, per year). Like all other industrialized nations, Germany has signed the Kyoto agreement but has yet to ratify it. Germany has traditionally been a leader in advocating environmental protection. The Green Party became strong during
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the 1980s and since 1998 has formed the executive together with the social democrats. The Minister of the Exterior and the Minister of the Environment are from the Green Party. However, Germany has a very strong coal industry that has long been subsidized by the government. There are still many households in Germany that heat with coal and much of the nation’s electricity is produced by coal power plants. Nevertheless, greenhouse gas emissions have been decreasing over the last decade. According to Germany’s Second Report under the FCCC, CO2 emissions were reduced by 12 percent between 1990–1995. The following German newspapers were chosen: the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the Sueddeutsche, and the Tages-Zeitung (TAZ). The FAZ is considered to be conservative, the Sueddeutsche center left and the TAZ very left. The TAZ was chosen not so much because of its circulation (at 60,000, rather small) but to get a broad political spectrum. It is important to point out that in Europe newspapers tend to be much more outspoken about their political orientation than those in the United States. Very often the newspapers label themselves as conservative or left-wing. In the United States, only newspapers that are considered radical label themselves openly. India India is a large developing country which emits 0.29 billion tons of Carbon per year. As an Annex II county, it is not required to reduce its emissions in the first round of emissions reductions under the Kyoto agreement. Its per capita greenhouse gas emissions are 20 times less than the United States per capita emissions (0.27 tons per year). The only newspapers available on Lexus Nexus were The Statesman and The Hindu. The most important newspaper, The Times of India, and The Hindustan, could therefore not be used in this study. The Hindu is of special importance in the south of India, whereas The Statesman is stronger in the east of the country. The LexisNexis search revealed only two articles on climate change in The Statesman and four in The Hindu. Also, not all issues of The Statesman were available on LexisNexis. The Indian newspapers have been therefore excluded from the quantitative analysis of this paper. They are included in the qualitative discussion.
A Quantitative Look at Climate Change Coverage All of the graphs in this part of the chapter are either organized by decreasing scale or are grouped by country, with the most left-wing paper on the left and the most conservative on the right. This results in the following order: in black the U.S. newspapers: Los Angeles Times (LAT), Washington Post (WP), New York Times (NYT); in
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gray the U.K. newspapers: The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph (Daily); in white the German newspapers: Tages–Zeitung (TAZ), Sueddeutsche (SD), Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ). Again, it has to be stressed that for the United States the order LAT, WP, NYT is somewhat arbitrary, since all three newspapers are very centrist. Frequency of Articles A search on Lexus Nexus for articles about climate change from September 7, 1999 to March 7, 2000 was conducted separately for each newspaper. The search revealed a wide range of results: 161 articles in the Guardian and 23 articles in the TAZ (Figure 8.1). All the articles were then examined. Articles that mentioned climate change only briefly and letters to the editor were excluded (Figure 8.2). Opinion and editorial pieces were included. Pieces in which at least half of the article was devoted to some aspects of climate change were categorized as articles about climate change. Again, the Guardian had the highest number of articles (40) followed by the New York Times (24) and the Daily Telegraph (23). All other newspapers featured between 13 and 18 articles. The numbers of articles cannot directly be compared to each other, because of the large differences in size of the examined newspapers. I therefore calculated an index that weights the number of climate change articles against the total size of the newspaper (Figure 8.3). The index numbers only have relevance in relationship to each other.
FIGURE 8.1. TOTAL ARTICLES MENTIONING CLIMATE CHANGE.
23
36
38
Germany: TAZ
Germany: Sueddeutsche
Germany: FAZ
102
U.K.: The Daily Telegraph
U.K.: The Guardian
U.K.: The Times
102
90
U.S.: New York Times
0
77
U.S.: Washington Post
80 40
161 132
U.S.: LA Times
200 160 120
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FIGURE 8.2. TOTAL NUMBER OF ARTICLES ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE. 50
16
14
13
13
Germany: TAZ
U.S.: LA Times
U.K.: The Times
16
Germany: Sueddeutsche
18
U.K.: The Daily Telegraph
U.S.: New York Times
U.K.: The Guardian
10 0
23
U.S.: Washington Post
23
Germany: FAZ
40
40 30 20
7.4
7.0
6.7
5.7
4.8
U.S.: Washington Post
U.K.: The Times
Germany: FAZ
U.S.: LA Times
9.6
U.S.: New York Times
11.9
Germany: TAZ
12.4
Germany: Sueddeutsche
24.1
U.K.: The Daily Telegraph
30.0 25.0 20.0 15.0 10.0 5.0 0.0
U.K.: The Guardian
Coverage Index
FIGURE 8.3. WEIGHTED COVERAGE.
Weighted averages did not change the ranking of the first and last places (Guardian and Los Angeles Times respectively), but it did change the order of the other newspapers quite considerably. There are large differences between the newspapers: The Guardian has twice as much coverage on climate change than the Daily or the TAZ and five times as much as the Los Angeles Times. The total coverage by country (Figure 8.4) revealed that the issue is almost equally poorly covered in the United States and in Germany. This is surprising,
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FIGURE 8.4. TOTAL COVERAGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE BY COUNTRY. 100
81
80 60
52
43.1
40
U.S.
43 24.6
21.4
20 0
Total articles about cc Weighted coverage
U.K.
Germany
since Germany has been considerably more proactive and outspoken on issues of climate change and renewable energy. We might find one explanation by applying the issue-attention cycle, a media theory developed by Anthony Downs in 1972 (Korleti, 1999). This theory claims that public interest and media coverage will wane, once an issue has been taken up by politicians and the public believes the issue has been taken care of. Another explanation might be that during the period examined, Germany was rocked by the financial scandal surrounding the former head of state Helmut Kohl. These explanations can only be speculations. The United Kingdom has almost twice as much coverage. This might be partly due to the fact that during the time covered the Climate Change Levy—an energy tax—was debated in Britain. Yet the analysis of the types of articles reveals that this can only be a partial explanation (especially since articles that dealt with the Climate Change Levy exclusively were not included in the analysis). Other reasons might be Britain’s vulnerability to sea level rise or its strong tradition of care for nature and wildlife. Yet again, these explanations can only be speculation. Degree of Acceptance One of the major problems with climate change coverage in the United States has been that the media, in an effort to be balanced, has given equal weight to climate scientists and climate skeptics, even though the skeptics are outnumbered by a factor of about 1000. Furthermore, most of the skeptics are not credible scientists.2 To measure the degree to which newspapers acknowledge the existence and severity of climate change, each article was rated using the following scale: 1. Article refutes the existence of (human-induced) climate change strongly and attacks the mainstream scientists or politicians. 2. Article refutes the severity of (human-induced) climate change (for example, argues that benefits will at least balance the possible damage).
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3. Article neither acknowledges nor refutes the existence of (human-induced) climate change. 4. Article acknowledges (human-induced) climate change. 5. Article acknowledges (human-induced) climate change and conveys urgency of the problem. (Articles that use only quotes that strongly urge action are counted in this category.) The rating is, of course, to some extent subjective. Nevertheless, the results (see Figure 8.5) are clear enough to give a strong indication of the tendencies in each newspaper. What is most striking about the results is that we can see the same pattern in all three countries: The more liberal (that is left wing) a paper is, the more strongly climate change is acknowledged to be a serious problem. All conservative papers have lower ratings. It is also surprising that overall skepticism is not stronger in the three U.S. newspapers than in the examined newspapers from Germany and the United Kingdom. To test the consistency of the acceptance rating, I calculated the standard deviation (Figure 8.6). The data shows a clear pattern in the United Kingdom and Germany: the standard deviation is smaller for the liberal papers and increases as the newspapers move to the right (politically speaking). This means that in conservative newspapers, the spread of skepticism and acceptance is much wider: the lowest rated article in the Daily was a 2.5, whereas the lowest rated article in the Guardian was a 4.
FIGURE 8.5. DEGREE OF ACCEPTANCE. 4.9
3.9
4.6 4.1
Germany: Sueddeutsche
Germany: TAZ
U.K.: The Daily Telegraph
U.K.: The Times
3.8
U.K.: The Guardian
U.S.: New York Times
U.S.: Washington Post
4.2
4.4
Germany: FAZ
4.9
4.7
U.S.: LA Times
5.5 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2
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FIGURE 8.6. STANDARD DEVIATION OF ACCEPTANCE. 1.1 0.68
0.9
0.72
0.67
0.55
0.5
Germany: FAZ
Germany: Sueddeutsche
U.K.: The Daily Telegraph
U.K.: The Times
U.K.: The Guardian
U.S.: New York Times
U.S.: Washington Post
Germany: TAZ
0.3
0.27 U.S.: LA Times
1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0
In the United States, all three newspapers have a very similar standard deviation of acceptance. This is not particularly surprising, since all the newspapers are centrist. What is somewhat surprising is that the standard deviation for the United States papers is considerably lower than for the conservative papers in Europe. A larger standard deviation indicates a lack of consistency in the newspapers’ overall stands on climate change. It expresses the difficulties that arise when a nonpolitical issue such as the science of climate change is cast as a political issue. Environmentalists have always been seen as more liberal. It comes therefore as no surprise that left-leaning newspapers not only have higher rates of acceptance but also lower rates of inconsistency in their messages. The conservatives have traditionally been seen as the ones who are more skeptical towards environmental issues. In the climate debate, many of them have long denied the existence of any problem. Now that the science is becoming increasingly clear, and we are starting to see some of the effects of climate change, the conservatives can no longer deny the problem. Acknowledging the existence and threat of climate change means that conservative voices have to change their position on climate change radically. This is the probable reason why the overall message of the articles on climate change is much more inconsistent in the conservative newspapers. A good example of the wide discrepancy in the overall message a newspaper might convey are the following titles of articles that appeared in the Daily Telegraph: on October 23, 1999, a story was headlined, “Money-Go-Round: Don’t risk becoming washed up by the storm. With freak weather conditions on the increase, make sure contents are covered.” The article urged people to get sufficient insurance coverage
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on their houses due to an increase in severe weather events caused by global warming. Two months later, On December 11, another story was titled: “Weather report: Scare stories cut no ice; Global Warming: the blatant lies and exaggerations.” One could argue that a higher standard deviation is an expression of freedom of opinion in a newspaper. This would be true, if the different approaches to solutions had been ranked. However, for the purposes of this study, the investigator has accepted the existence of climate change as a scientific reality. To use an analogy, no one would argue that we should have more diverse media coverage on whether tobacco is a harmful substance or not. Denying the existence of a scientific phenomenon seriously misguides readers. It is, in the best case, sloppy journalism and, in the worst case, outright deception. Placement The placement of an article indicates the relevance the newspaper gives to a topic. Agenda-setting media theory claims that the media spokesmen “do not tell people what to think; they tell them what to think about” (Stepel and Guido, 1994). An article that appears on the front page indicates that it covers an important issue. Likewise, if a newspaper continuously buries articles of a certain topic in the middle or towards the end of the newspaper, it implies that the topic is more arcane and does not have relevance to the general public. Figure 8.7 shows the number of articles that have appeared on the front page, the first 5 pages, or the first 15 pages respectively. The Times was omitted from this section because
30 25
Frontpage
22
page 1-5
page 1-15
20
00
6
8 2
0
45 U.S.: LA Times
122
3
Germany: FAZ
11
6
Germany: Sueddeutsche
0
23
U.S.: Washington Post
0
2
U.S.: New York Times
5
4
10
Germany: TAZ
10
13
10
U.K.: The Daily Telegraph
15
U.K.: The Guardian
Number of Articles
FIGURE 8.7. PLACEMENT OF ARTICLES.
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page numbers were not available. The newspapers are organized by their weighted average of climate change coverage (see above). Seventy percent of all climate change articles in the TAZ appeared in the first 15 pages. Yet, we have to be cautious when comparing the TAZ with the other newspapers since it is a much smaller newspaper with fewer pages therefore, more articles will show up in the first 15 pages (see appendix). The two British newspapers give the issue more prevalence than their German and U.S. counterparts. This confirms the analysis on amount of coverage, which showed much more climate change coverage in Britain than in Germany and the United States. Strikingly, 90 percent of all climate change articles in the New York Times are buried somewhere in the middle or the end of the paper. This confirms that the New York Times does not wish to approach the political issues surrounding climate change. (Eight of the 24 articles on climate change appear in the science section, accounting for almost half of the total words of climate change articles.) A comparison of the placement in the different sections of the newspapers (for example national news, international news, science, and so on) would have been very interesting but was not possible because of very different categorizations among the newspapers and a lack of information.
A Qualitative Comparison of Climate Change Coverage A qualitative analysis of climate change coverage requires consideration of several factors. First, what level of understanding can newspapers assume their readerships have? Second, how much do they care? Third, how do the newspapers deal with issues of scientific uncertainty? The Level of Public Education In order to make informed decisions, the public has to have a basic understanding of the science and the politics of climate change. Research in the mid-1990s by Kempton and others showed profound confusion among the general public about climate change and the ozone hole. Kempton explains that many of the misconceptions embedded in cultural belief come about when a new issue is introduced. Instead of constructing a new mental concept, people tend to integrate the new issue into an already existing framework. Climate change is a telling example. Just a few years before climate change became a public issue, people had been exposed to information about ozone depletion. The ozone issue was, unlike most environmental problems, fairly easy to grasp. In addition, the general public was provided with a powerful image,
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the ozone hole, and a few culprits like the aerosol can. Climate change is vastly more complex and not as easily visualized. As a result, people tried to integrate the new climate change issue into their mental model about the ozone hole. Kempton shows clearly how this led to misconceptions and confusions about the issue. The vast majority of people were unable to distinguish between the two problems (Kempton and others, 1995). Kempton also found that, in general, average knowledge about environmental issues is low. This is reflected in the most recent National Report Card on Environmental Knowledge, Attitudes and Behavior, a study done yearly by the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation. For example, the majority of Americans still think spray cans are depleting the ozone layer, even though such spray cans were banned in 1979. It is arguable that most people know little to nothing about climate change in any of the countries studied in this chapter. Two quotations from English and Indian newspapers demonstrate this: Priede hopes his research will help our understanding of global warming. Humans are burning fossil fuels, which creates excess carbon dioxide. That is contributing to the hole in the ozone layer. There is a theory that the earth will look after itself and will adapt to deal with the carbon dioxide. By studying the ocean bed we can determine how much of the carbon dioxide is being removed permanently and how much is being recycled and returned to the surface. [The Times, Dec. 9, 1999] Excessive rain and failing monsoons, from which the widely scattered regions of the world suffer at the same time, result from ecological onslaughts such as the ripping of the ozone layer by the unchecked emission of chlorofluorocarbons it has had to suffer principally from the richer countries. Unless such environmental vandalism is effectively checked, the resulting global warming will irretrievably wreck the planetary ecology. [The Hindu, Dec. 29, 1999]
Does the Public Care? Since most Americans are very poorly educated about climate change, it is not surprising to find that they do not really worry about it. A U.S. Gallup poll from 1999 found: Worry over specific [environmental] issues has not changed [much since, 1990]. At the same time that Americans are more satisfied with the work being done to protect the environment in general terms, there has been little to no change in the degree to which they, personally, worry about specific environmental issues.
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Americans seem most concerned about the pollution of drinking water, with 68 percent worrying “a great deal” about this problem. Other big concerns to more than half the public include toxic waste contamination, pollution of rivers, lakes and reservoirs, and air pollution. Of the eleven issues tested this year, Americans are the least concerned about “acid rain,” mentioned as a great concern by just 29 percent, followed by “global warming,” at 34 percent.
A recent survey in the United Kingdom found that 60 percent of the population believes that climate change and air pollution are a serious threat but only 20 percent supports higher taxes for car drivers to curb emissions. Yet when asked about what should be given priority, economic growth or environmental protection, a majority give priority to the environment. The recent outcry of the American public when oil prices rose indicates a similar attitude among Americans. Environmental protection seems to be a theoretical priority, but when it comes to personal spending and lifestyle choices, economic concerns seem to far outweigh environmental concerns. Explaining Scientific Uncertainty The main processes that contribute to climate change are simple and easy to understand. There is no scientific uncertainty about the fact that thanks to the “greenhouse effect” our planet is about 30° Celsius warmer than it would be without a heat-capturing atmosphere. It is also a fact that CO2, methane, water vapor, and other greenhouse gases absorb heat and have therefore the capacity to warm the atmosphere. We also know for a fact that CO2 levels have risen by over a third since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Well established also are some of the effects that climate change will have: sea levels will rise due to higher temperatures which cause water to expand and melt glaciers. Precipitation will increase overall, due to an increase in water evaporation and an increase in severe weather events (IPCC SAR, 1995). Despite this knowledge, it is difficult to answer specific questions about what impacts may be expected in what places at what moment in the future. Thousands of scientists around the world are working towards a better understanding of the physical and chemical interactions that shape global weather and climate patterns and computer models have become much more sophisticated over the last decade. Scientists are still not able to predict with certainty the local changes that will occur due to climate change. The scientific debate over new models, new theories that try to explain a certain phenomenon, and new studies is very intense. It is important that scientists evaluate and criticize each other’s work in order to identify the weaknesses and strengths of new scientific findings.
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Unfortunately, the media does not handle such uncertainty well. It is difficult enough to translate the highly scientific issues into plain language that the layperson (and the policy person for that matter) can understand. Explaining the uncertainty and putting it in context is something even experienced science writers regularly fail to do. Making matters worse, in the U.S., the climate skeptics, backed by the fossil fuel lobby, have used this uncertainty to misrepresent, misinform, and confuse the public. In his book The Heat Is On (1995) Ross Gelbspan gives a detailed account of the financial contributions many outspoken skeptics have received from fossil fuel industries. He also reveals that most of the scientific arguments put forward by the skeptics have no scientific validity but have nevertheless been quoted again and again in the media as valid counterarguments. It is interesting to note that in the last year the Global Climate Coalition, a fossil fuel industry-sponsored organization, and other like-minded think tanks have shifted their emphasis from scientific arguments to economic ones. It seems that scientific evidence has become so strong that even the most convinced skeptics have to acknowledge that global temperature is rising (NYT, Feb. 29, 2000). To illustrate how the media has dealt with uncertainty, I will look at one specific issue: the satellite debate. The satellite debate started a couple of years ago, when scientists publicized climate research that used satellite temperature measurements. The temperature records from these satellites did not confirm the global warming trends that had been observed by surface temperature measurements. On the contrary, some of them showed a decrease in average temperature. Climate skeptics used this study to debunk the climate change theory. Early this year the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) issued a report on climate change that also examined the disparity of these satellite and groundlevel temperature records. The report confirmed that global warming was undoubtedly real. Concerning the satellite debate, the report stated that when short-term climate fluctuations, such as the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, were taken into account, the discrepancy in temperature measurements shrank considerably. The report furthermore pointed out that the time frame of 20 years for which satellite data is inconsistent with other measurement was too short to make any substantial predictions and that the discrepancy in measurements could not be fully explained. The issue was taken up by all three U.S. papers, the British Times and the Indian Statesman. The New York Times printed an 809-word article on the issue that appeared the same day as the article about the climate skeptics cited above (2/29/00). The article is very ambiguous (acceptance rating: 3). It explains the issue well but does not put it in context—that is, even though this particular issue might still be ambiguous, there have been numerous very alarming studies
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that point towards an accelerated warming of the earth (for example, the shrinking of the arctic and of glaciers and the rise in deep sea temperature). The article ends with: “But for now, the great satellite debate remains at least partly unsettled.” The Los Angeles Times reported on the NRC study on January 13, 2000. The issues behind the debate are well described but the article ends with a quote by Arthur Robinson, an ardent climate skeptic with no credentials in the scientific community (acceptance rating: 3.5). The Times published an article on March 1, 2000 that reported on the NRC study. Despite the strong statements in the NRC study affirming trends toward global warming, the title of the Times article reads: “Doubt Cast on Warming.” The article ends with the sentence: “The argument [over the satellite debate] continues.” Again, the issue is portrayed as a two-sided argument and is not put into context (acceptance rating: 3). The final paragraph is a lengthy quote by Fred Singer, one of the most zealous climate skeptics. It is interesting to note that one day later the Statesman published the exact same article that had appeared in the Times. This may point toward a close relationship between those two newspapers. Two Washington Post articles also mentioned the satellite debate. Interestingly, the two articles are written in a very different tone. The first one that appeared on January 13, 2000 reported on the NRC study (acceptance rating: 3). The satellite issue is not put in context and is portrayed as an argument between two opposing parties, as the ending of the article shows: “It totally deflates the argument of the so-called skeptics that had used the apparent difference between ground-based and satellite data to argue that we really didn’t know whether the world is warming or not,” said Michael Oppenheimer, an atmospheric scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund. But Arthur Robinson, the president of and a professor of chemistry at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, called the report a “political document” and evidence that the “National Academy Board has pretty much been taken over by enviros.” He contended that any global warming is part of a natural trend. “One must not lose track of the fact that the Earth’s temperature has been warming now for 300 years, not just 50 years. And there was no coal or gas 300 years ago,” he said.
The second article appeared on February 23, 2000 and reports on different newer scientific climate change studies. The satellite debate is very well put in context with other studies. The issue is also not just portrayed as two-sided, but as
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being part of a wider scientific discourse that tries to explain a set of very complicated phenomena. No
