Environmental Diplomacy: Negotiating More Effective Global Agreements PDF
Preview Environmental Diplomacy: Negotiating More Effective Global Agreements
Environmental Diplomacy This page intentionally left blank Environmental Diplomacy Negotiating More Effective Global Agreements Lawrence E. Susskind M.I.T.—Harvard Public Disputes Program New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1994 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland Madrid and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. 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, or otherwise, without prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Susskind, Lawrence. Environmental diplomacy: negotiating more effective global agreements / Lawrence E. Susskind. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-19-507593-5. —ISBN 0-19-507594-3 (pbk.) 1. Environmental law, International. 2. Sustainable development—Law and legislation. I. Title. K3585.4.S87 1993 341.7'62—dc20 93-14891 987654 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, recycled paper For Leslie, who understands This page intentionally left blank Preface I am not an environmentalist—not if that means advocating protection of natural resources at any cost. Nor am I blindly prodevelopment. Clearly, we've got to feed, clothe, shelter, and find productive work for billions of people, but we ought to be able to accomplish these goals in a way that leaves future generations at least as well off as we are. As the world's population grows, our task becomes increasingly diffi- cult. Many nations do not have adequate resources to meet even the most basic needs of their citizens, let alone the resources they will need to feed millions of additional mouths in the future. In the meantime, some of the wealthier nations have taken their resource endowments for granted— wasting energy, allowing land to become unproductive, polluting water supplies, and poisoning the air—all in the name of economic growth. Environmental activists and advocates of sustainable development have pressed for changes in domestic policies in both developing and developed nations. In Europe, the United States, and several other places, substantial progress has been made: conservation efforts are under way and pollution levels have stopped climbing. Indeed, in some of these countries most resource management decisions are now made with much greater attention to minimizing environmental impacts and achieving sus- tainability. In a good portion of the developing world there is grudging acceptance that economic growth and wise resource management need not be traded off against each other; and the rapid rise of nongovernmental groups devoted to this proposition, even in some of the poorest nations of the world, suggests that the prospects for the future are improving. However, just as environmental progress is about to be achieved at the domestic level, at least in some parts of the world, the environmental agenda is shifting. Now the most pressing environmental problems are global, including ozone depletion, pollution of the oceans, loss of biodiver- sity, and potentially devastating climate changes. The resources that need viii PREFACE protecting are common resources—fisheries, endangered species, rivers, oceans, forests, and the like that transcend national boundaries. Countries that have learned how to make environmental regulations and control development will, unfortunately, not be able to solve these global prob- lems on their own. And countries still struggling with the burdens of poverty, famine, and war do not see themselves in a position to help. How will we achieve the level of global cooperation needed to tackle this new generation of environmental threats? We don't have much to work with—only the United Nations (which has not had much success) and a handful of multilateral organizations. Although there are a great many individuals and nongovernmental groups throughout the world ea- ger to assist, coordinating a global response, sometimes in the face of active resistance, is extremely difficult. In June 1992 the world's attention was focused briefly on these global environmental problems, when ten of thousands of official delegates and unofficial activists met in Brazil at an "Earth Summit" sponsored by the United Nations. After two years of elaborate preparatory meetings, 178 countries attempted to negotiate a series of international environmental treaties. Conference organizers managed to get more heads of state to the conference than had ever gathered before, but they were not able to com- plete even a small portion of the agenda assigned to them by the General Assembly of the United Nations. This worries me, and I think it should worry you as well. We must find other ways of ensuring the level of collective action required to address the next generation of global environmental threats. To do this, the art and science of environmental diplomacy must be en- hanced. Diplomats, politicians, environmental action groups, scientists, business leaders, journalists, and many others will need to find new ways of working together. We will have to weave together knowledge and skills from the fields of international relations, environmental science, negotia- tion, law, economics, and other fields to build the necessary institutional capacity. It will not help, the way it sometimes does, to break the problem into smaller, more manageable, pieces. Only a comprehensive global ap- proach to managing environmental resources and coordinating sustainable development will work. WilmotFlat,N.H. L.E.S. March 1993 Contents Abbreviations, xi 1. What Is This Book About? 3 2. The Weaknesses of the Existing Environmental Treaty-making System, 11 Knowing How to Measure Success, 13 Three Serious Obstacles to Global Cooperation, 18 An Inadequate Legal Structure, 24 Fundamental Flaws in the Convention-Protocol Approach, 30 The Earth Summit as an Illustration, 37 3. Representation and Voting, 43 Why Countries Participate, 44 Only Countries Vote, 46 The Majority Does Not Rule, 48 "Unofficials" Have Key Roles to Play, 49 Who Represents Future Generations? 53 The Power of the Secretariat, 58 There Is No Consensus-Building Process, 61 4. The Need for a Better Balance Between Science and Politics, 62 There Will Always Be Uncertainty, 66 Giving Science Its Due, 68 Adversary Science Undermines Trust, 71 Are There Really "Epistemic Communities" of Scientists? 73 Ongoing Roles For Scientific Advisers, 76 No Regrets and the Precautionary Principle, 78 Contingent Agreements Are the Answer, 80
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