In the past three decades, protecting the global environment has emerged as one of the major challenges in international relations. No fewer than ten global environmental treaties have been negotiated as well as literally hundreds of regional and bilateral agreements. Governments have also endorsed dozens of comprehensive action plans, most notably the 400-page Agenda 21, which set forth a blueprint for implementing sustainable development. The result is an increasingly complex and rich body of international environmental law and policy. At least on paper, this provides a broad framework for moving toward a more environmentally sustainable future.
Unfortunately, this rich body of treaties, action plans, and other instruments has not reversed global environmental decline. Virtually every major environmental indicator is worse today than it was at the time of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED or the Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro. Climate change has caused the warmest decade in recorded history, the ozone layer continues to deteriorate, species extinction is at the highest rate since the end of the dinosaur era, fish populations are crashing, and toxic chemicals are accumulating in every part of the planet and in every living organism, including humans.
This essay looks first at the promise of the Earth Summit and then proceeds to analyze several critical areas where implementation has fallen short – and where U.S. leadership can make a difference in the next century.
The Promise of Rio
The 1992 Rio Earth Summit was heralded as the turning point for global environmental policy. More than one hundred countries came to the Rio summit, which sought to merge two critical international concerns – environmental protection and economic development – that had been evolving on different tracks during the 1970s and 1980s. For developing countries, the merger of environment and development was a major improvement over earlier environmental conferences and provided hope for increased North-South cooperation. In addition, the cold war had recently ended, and the rise of a one-superpower world meant that East-West conflicts would not dominate this conference, as they had earlier international environmental efforts.
On paper, at least, the Earth Summit did provide a potential vision for moving toward sustainable development – that is, toward both greater environmental protection and greater economic justice. The Earth Summit yielded two legally binding treaties: the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Also a product of the Summit were a set of nonbinding general principles known as the Rio Declaration, a set of nonbinding principles on forest management, and the blueprint for sustainable development entitled Agenda 21.
The assembled governments also established the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) to integrate environment and development into the UN system while providing a forum to monitor the implementation of summit commitments.
Looking for U.S. Leadership
More than any other country, the United States is responsible for the existing gulf between Rio's rhetoric of international environmental consciousness and the post-Rio environmental reality. Not only is the U.S. the world's only remaining economic and political superpower, it's also the largest polluter and the largest user of most important resources. Although the United States is often in the vanguard in recognizing global environmental threats and in calling for a multilateral response, it often lags in changing its own behavior. Once considered the leader in environmental regulation, the United States now lags well behind Germany and other European countries in adopting new and innovative regulatory approaches such as ecological taxes, extended product responsibility, and the precautionary principle on avoiding probable environmental damage.
Although a leader in previous environmental conferences and negotiations, the United States (under then-President George Bush) almost single-handedly undermined the Earth Summit. Just days before the Rio summit opened, for example, the United States announced that it would not sign the Biodiversity Convention, despite provisionally adopting the draft version at the end of the negotiation session two weeks before. Instead, the United States emphasized the need to conserve the world's forests and offered what was considered a small, $150-million aid package to protect forests in developing countries. Southern leaders immediately labeled this gesture as "greenwash", viewing U.S. support for forest conservation as a cynical effort to shift the focus from the North's responsibility to control industrial pollution to the South's responsibility to conserve forests as carbon sinks. Malaysia's Ambassador Ranji Sathia responded, "The [$150 million] does not impress us. They are just trying to divert attention from their failing elsewhere – for example, in the watering down of the climate change convention and their refusal to sign the biodiversity treaty".
Filling the Environmental Policy Gaps
Despite the many environmental regimes and action plans negotiated in the past quarter century, important gaps still exist in the international environmental policy framework. The framework has not developed in any systematic or strategic way. Rather it is a collection of numerous treaties, each addressing relatively discrete global or regional environmental issues. Superimposed over these binding treaties are a set of broader, nonbinding declarations or resolutions, such as the Stockholm and Rio declarations. No binding set of general environmental principles currently exists. Moreover, some new or particularly complicated environmental issues still await international attention, compounding the policy gaps.
Developing a Binding Framework of Environmental Principles. The lack of an overarching binding framework has many implications for the future effectiveness of international environmental policies. In trade and environment disputes, for example, environmental concerns are at a disadvantage, because the set of rules for international environmental protection is not as clear as the WTO's trade rules. Binding environmental principles could help to achieve more balanced integration between environmental protection and other social goals like trade. Such principles could also provide a substantive basis for coordinating the activities of the many international institutions that currently claim a role in environmental policy. Finally, binding principles could help in establishing minimum environmental standards – both for private sector activities and for governments – by assisting in the harmonization of domestic environmental laws.
Despite the potential importance of binding principles, the United States has consistently opposed the development of any general environmental covenant. It argues that any covenant negotiated today would not sufficiently protect the global environment, because developing countries would defend their sovereign right to develop. The negotiation of a binding covenant may indeed magnify the overall influence of developing countries, because they do not generally have the financial and human resources to participate effectively in the contemporaneous negotiations of many separate environmental treaties and instruments. In fact, it may be exactly those fears of negotiating on a level playing field that drives U.S. opposition to a covenant rather than a fear that the resulting principles would be too weak.
Instead of pursuing a binding covenant, the United States seems intent on weakening some of the key proposed principles. For example, the United States is one of the few remaining countries still opposing the precautionary principle (which holds that a lack of scientific certainty should not be used to prevent cost-effective action to address potentially irreversible environmental threats). The U.S. approach to environmental regulation requires that there be proven environmental damage before control measures are taken.
Washington stands virtually alone in rejecting the precautionary principle – a guideline with significant implications for many global environmental issues. Based in part on the precautionary principle, Europe is championing a much stronger regulatory approach to biosafety issues such as the release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). To make matters worse, the U.S. has been threatening to challenge Europe's precautionary approach to GMOs in the World Trade Organization, basing its argument on the lack of definitive science for justifying GMO trade restrictions.
Getting the Rules Right Regarding the Climate Regime. Climate change may be the single most significant environmental issue of the next few decades. In the Kyoto Protocol, industrialized countries committed to reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions an average of 5% from 1990 levels by 2012. In addition, the parties also established an international trading system in carbon emissions. Tons of carbon emissions will soon trade like other commodities throughout the world. To incorporate as many countries as possible, the Kyoto Protocol was necessarily general, leaving many critical issues for future negotiations. By the end of 2000 the Conference of the Parties to the Protocol must address such issues as how to count the carbon sequestered by forests, landfills, and agricultural practices in calculating a country's net greenhouse gas emissions; how to facilitate the trading of carbon emission credits between countries; and how to monitor and enforce such a trading system. Given America's position as the world's supreme carbon emitter and energy user, U.S. leadership in getting these rules right will be critical if the climate regime is to have any hope of responding effectively to the threat of climate change.
Imposing Liability and Providing Compensation. Few international environmental regimes have addressed the question of liability and compensation for harm caused to the environment. The Montreal Protocol, widely viewed as the model for all international environmental treaties, effectively banned the production and use of most ozone-depleting substances. But it did not hold those responsible for ozone depletion legally accountable, nor did it provide for compensating persons or countries that have suffered from ozone depletion. Even where liability issues have been generally acknowledged in international law – e.g., concerning damage caused by transboundary shipments of hazardous wastes – the parties have been deadlocked in trying to operationalize the concept of liability. The U.S. has often opposed international liability in these contexts, ostensibly out of concern that minimum levels of due process and fairness may be hard to ensure in international forums. However, America's disproportionate responsibility for many global environmental threats and its vulnerability to liability claims also help explain U.S. opposition.
Emphasizing Environmental Restoration. Given how far we have come in damaging the global environment, international environmental efforts in the future will have to be focused more on environmental restoration than protection. Although more expensive and less effective than protecting resources in the first place, restoration may sometimes be the only choice left. Environmental restoration is now a dynamic part of domestic environmental management and will undoubtedly begin to inform future global environmental negotiations. In this country, for example, the increasing trend toward removal of dams, reintroduction of endangered species, and large-scale restoration projects – like the attempt to recover the Florida Everglades – portends a future focus of international cooperation.
As an example, international aid agencies are discussing whether to undertake a massive effort to restore coastal mangroves and interior watersheds in Central America. Many mangrove forests have disappeared as a result of shrimp aquaculture, and the region's watersheds have been deforested for export timber. As a result, Hurricane Mitch struck with greater devastation. In the hurricane's wake, political pressure has been building in the region for governments to restore these important ecosystems – so fundamental for the region's environmental sustainability.
Addressing Persistent Chemicals. In June 1998, negotiations began in Montreal to establish a global convention to eliminate or manage twelve of the world's worst chemical contaminants, including dioxins, PCBs, DDT, and other pesticides. These chemicals persist in the environment and accumulate in human and animal tissues. Many of them have been linked to cancer and to adverse affects on human endocrine systems. Although most countries concur on how to regulate the twelve chemicals currently identified in the agreement, major differences exist about how to add new chemicals to the list of globally regulated or prohibited substances. Also critical to any global accord will be the decision about whether countries that are the source of existing stockpiles of phased-out chemicals should be responsible for their disposal. The document (to be completed by 2000) has been closely monitored by the chemical industry, which is pressing the United States to narrow the agreement's purview.
Water Shortages. Most experts agree that access to fresh water may be the most important natural resource issue for the next century. Human health, the environment, and even a country's national security depend on access to adequate water supplies. But according to a recent UN Freshwater Assessment, humans are already using "about half" of the 12,500 cubic kilometers of water that is readily available. With world population expected to double in the next 50 years and with water consumption historically increasing at twice the rate of population, our global water situation is bleak. To make matters worse, water is allocated unevenly around the globe. Today, 460 million people or 8% of the world's population live in countries already facing serious water shortages. Regional water shortages may thus exacerbate international conflicts and threaten national security if international management efforts are not successful. A 1997 UN convention on transnational water uses provides a beginning framework for managing these regional disputes, but long-term financial and political leadership from the United States and other powerful countries will be required for the convention to be successful.
Consumption Levels. The Earth Summit recognized explicitly that achieving sustainability would require addressing both population and consumption. Two years after the Earth Summit, the world's governments came together at the Cairo Population Summit to negotiate a comprehensive plan to curb population growth, but the North has yet to allow any meaningful dialogue on consumption. The United States, in particular, has blocked international efforts to address consumption levels. Domestically, the U.S. lacks any comprehensive effort to "green" consumption and lags well behind Europe, for example, in adopting green taxes, ecolabeling procedures, "take-back" legislation (requiring industries to take back and dispose of their by-products at the end of their useful life), or other policies aimed at greening consumption. In the next century, no serious effort at achieving sustainable development will be able to avoid tackling the issue of Northern consumption levels and patterns.
Basel Convention on Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes
The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was adopted in 1989 and entered into force in May 1992. This global environmental treaty regulates the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes and obliges its parties to ensure that such wastes are managed and disposed of in an environmentally sound manner. It also protects the right of states to ban entry of foreign waste into their territories. The United States signed the Basel Convention on March 22, 1989, but has not yet ratified it.
Convention on Biological Diversity
The Convention on Biological Diversity was signed by over 150 governments at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and entered into force in 1993. It has become the centerpiece of international efforts to conserve the planet's biological diversity, ensure the sustainable use of biological resources, protect ecosystems and natural habitats, and promote the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources. The convention was signed on June 4, 1993, but the United States has failed to ratified it.
Convention on Climate Change
Over 150 states signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in June 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit, recognizing climate change as "a common concern of humankind". The convention aimed to reduce emission levels of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000 but failed to set binding goals. The United States signed the treaty on June 12, 1992, ratified it on October 15, 1992, and entered it into force in the United States on March 21, 1994.
Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change
The agreement sets, for the first time, legally binding limits on the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Under the protocol, 38 industrialized countries agreed to reduce their overall emissions to about 5% below 1990 levels by 2012, and a range of specific reduction requirements was set for other countries. The U.S. signed the protocol on November 12, 1998, but has not yet ratified it.
Convention to Combat Desertification
The Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Especially in Africa (CCD) promotes an integrated approach to managing the problems posed by dry-land ecosystems and encourages developed nations to support such efforts internationally. The convention came into effect in 1996 and has over 120 parties. The United States has signed but not ratified the convention.
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)
CITES establishes international controls on global trade in endangered or threatened species of animals and plants. For example, CITES prohibits all commercial trade in wildlife species threatened with extinction. CITES was ratified by the United States on January 14, 1974, and implemented as the Endangered Species Act. More than 125 countries are members.
Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer
The Montreal Protocol – and subsequent revisions – is the primary international regime for controlling the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances such as CFCs, halons, and methyl bromide. As of June 1994, 136 states, including virtually all major industrialized countries and most developing countries, had become parties to the protocol. The United States signed the protocol on September 16, 1987, and ratified it on April 21, 1988. The protocol and its subsequent revisions modified the original 1985 Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer.
International Environmental Law Principles
These principles have been adopted, as indicated, from either the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development or the IUCN Draft Covenant on Environment and Development.
Improving the UN Architecture
No single institution legislates or manages international environmental problems. Scores of official and semiofficial organizations and agencies have at least some environmental mandate.
