Environment, Society and International Relations

Towards More Effective International Agreements

Gabriela Kütting

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134610365
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Written in an accessible and lively style, this ground-breaking text marries a critique of current remedies towards environmental problems to original and viable alternatives.
This text adopts an eco-centric rather than a traditional environmental management perspective to focuses on the key issues such as:
* The effectiveness of international agreements in solving environmental problems
* the role of the structures and constraints within which these agreements operate

Part I

Distinguishing between institutional and environmental effectiveness

1 Introduction

In the past 30 years, international environmental agreements have steadily risen to reach record numbers. There is a loose assumption that this is a good thing and that this rise has resulted in a commensurable improvement in environmental protection. But is this actually the case? In fact, is there a positive correlation at all or are there negative correlations? What are the connections between environmental diplomacy and environmental protection and how can environmental protection be achieved? That is the subject of this book.

It has been recognised that many, if not all, problems of environmental degradation are transboundary in nature and therefore need an international solution. National policy measures essentially cannot cope with international environmental problems because the source of pollution or the impact of pollution may not be within a particular state's jurisdiction. The growing and now substantial literature on international environmental agreements is testimony to the prominence of this characterisation, and to the assumption that there is a strong correspondence between the growing number of international environmental agreements and a purported increase in environmental propriety.

The quantity of international environmental agreements concluded recently should not be taken as evidence of a necessary increase in quality. The number of international environmental agreements may be impressive but this does not mean that the terms of the negotiated agreement necessarily help to improve the state of the environment. In fact, rather the opposite may be the case. In order to shed light on this key question, this book offers a two-pronged approach. It reviews the academic discourse relating to the evaluation of effectiveness of international environmental agreements and then examines the record of agreement effectiveness with reference to two cases, namely the Mediterranean Action Plan and the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution.

The conventional indicator for diplomatic success is the mere existence or completed negotiation of an international environmental agreement. However, if the paramount aim of an international environmental agreement is to deal effectively with a specific environmental problem (and in Chapters 3 and 4 the meaning of effectiveness will be explained in detail), then, as this book seeks to show, it is clear that neither the mere existence of an agreement nor possible high participation nor ultimate compliance should merit undue celebration without the crucial test of the adequacy of the international environmental agreement to deal with the specific problem nominally addressed. This argument has so far been neglected in International Relations (IR) thinking and even in the international policy-related literature, and it is to this crucial test that this book is focused.

In this introduction, through a brief overview of problems in the existing literature, I will outline the reasoning that gave rise to the ideas put forward here by surveying the problems identified in existing IR approaches to the study of the effectiveness of international environmental agreements. Further, the reasons for selecting the two agreements studied here will be explained. This will be followed by a description of the method of analysis used in this project and an outline of the chapters.

Outline of the problem of ‘effectiveness’

Effectiveness means distinctly different things to different communities. To academics, effectiveness describes the ability of an approach to solve a particular issue. In this context, the scope of a solution needs to be discussed. Cox distinguishes between problem-solving theory and critical theory (Cox, 1981: 128). Problem-solving theory reproduces prevailing power and social relationships with the general aim of problem-solving being ‘to make these relationships and institutions work smoothly by dealing effectively with particular sources of trouble’ (p. 129). The term ‘problem-solving theory’ is confusing because it gives the impression that the main concern is the resolution of a problem. However, with regard to issues of effectiveness I argue that problem-solving relates to the resolution of political rather than substantial problems. Critical theory, on the other hand, stands apart from prevailing orders and structures by not taking institutions and social/power relationships for granted. Rather, ‘it is directed towards an appraisal of the very framework for action, or problematic, which problem-solving theory accepts as its parameters’ (p. 129).

It is from this critical perspective that I seek to develop the concept of effectiveness in this book. Institutions and existing social and power relations are not the defining boundaries within which effectiveness is analysed; they are given by the structures, origins and remedies of the problem of environmental degradation.

The state is still the foremost regulatory actor in international society. The doctrine of state sovereignty prescribes that the state holds a monopoly on legitimacy to enter international negotiations on environmental regulation. In turn, this doctrine is institutionalised in international law and the constitution of the United Nations system. In consequence, it is not surprising that international environmental agreements between states are seen as the principal form of international environmental cooperation. Thus, the development of international environmental cooperation on a large and organised scale is typically traced back to the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm although the first multilateral international convention relating to environmental matters can be traced as far back as the 1902 Convention for the Protection of Birds Useful to Agriculture (Kiss and Sheldon, 1991: 33). The many single-issue or sectoral international environmental agreements which characterised the formative years of international environmental cooperation, and which continue to dominate international environmental agreements, were followed by the more comprehensive initiatives and agreements such as the Brandt Commission report (1980) and the Brundtland Commission report (1987), culminating in the 1992 Earth Summit, the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro.

With the growing requirement in the IR and environmental literature that international environmental cooperation be seen to be convincing, the question of the effectiveness of such cooperation arises. The traditional realist and neorealist view of IR is that cooperation between states, as opposed to other forms of cooperation, is the only way to focus on international environmental problems. However, it is argued here that it is not necessarily an adequate or even appropriate way to do so.

The IR literature has nominally taken account of the problem of effectiveness in the growing body of literature on this subject. However, it has located the concept of effectiveness well within the traditional boundaries of the discipline. This means that it does so with the traditional analytical focus of the discipline, i.e. scrutinising and trying to explain the behaviour of actors in the international system rather than focusing on the problem giving rise to cooperation and its adequate solution. The same also applies to the study of the effectiveness of international environmental agreements. Literature on the subject is mostly limited to the study of how cooperation between states can best be described and to the conditions in which institutions work. Effectiveness, as defined by these criteria, means that an agreement can achieve a change of behaviour in an actor that would not have occurred in the absence of that particular agreement (Young, 1992: 161). This understanding of effectiveness does not require that environmental improvement occurs as a result of the agreement.

In this school of thought, the effectiveness of an agreement is assessed within conventional IR and regime theory terms, namely in relation to questions of international order and international organisation. Regimes are thus seen as a way to overcome the anarchy of the international system, which, in the realist view, characterises world politics, and to create a common code of conduct, or norms. This distorting focus places actor behaviour above environmental regulation. The relationship between the international cooperative effort and the environmental problem to be tackled is disregarded.

As Paterson (1995: 215) observes:

Even though it is often accepted that IR as a ‘bounded subject matter’ may leak through into other areas, there are limits. Thus, for those who have written on global environmental problems, the question ‘why have these questions arisen in the first place?’ does not usually get asked – this is presumably left to political economists, geographers, or someone else. This question is left to others, as it is supposedly not an ‘international’ question even though, if you reverse the lens, and start from an environmental perspective, it is of course of supreme importance. Thus the established academic disciplinary boundaries impede our overall understanding of environmental politics, and are one source of why the analyses of environmental regimes are so limited.

Although the main question to be asked in this book is not why environmental problems have arisen in the first place but rather, if international environmental agreements can rise to the challenge they pose, the point made by Paterson is of central importance. The question of how adequately an environmental agreement can and does tackle the environmental problem to be regulated can indeed be deemed to be outside the discipline's boundary, as Paterson posits, because it does not relate to the primary concern of IR, namely to define, or find a logic behind the interaction of the various international actors. However, I argue that this ‘externalisation’ (i.e. placing outside the discipline) is unjustified and needs to be remedied. Traditional IR approaches tend to be methodologically limited in their application to the study of effectiveness by concentrating on behavioural aspects of ‘regime formation’ and treating the agreement as a ‘closed system’. These limitations and the remedial action proposed here will be discussed further below. However, first, the choice of agreements to be studied will be explained.

Choice of empirical studies

Two illustrative case studies have been chosen because they serve as good examples of the complexities involved in the study of institutional and environmental effectiveness. One of the agreements, the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP), is generally considered an effective (in the traditional sense of institutional effectiveness) agreement while the other, the Mediterranean Action Plan (MAP), is not. However, neither can be described as effective in the important new, environmental sense that I propose. The aim of this book is to use these agreements as a means by which the concept of environmental effectiveness can be developed. These empirical studies serve as an illustration for an approach that can equally be applied to other global or regional agreements as well as other subject areas such as food or health.

CLRTAP has been chosen as an important and relevant empirical study because it is regarded as a success story in international environmental agreement-making. Although it was widely studied in the academic literature in the 1980s, hardly any literature exists on the developments that have taken place in the 1990s. In addition, because of its long-standing nature, CLRTAP provides a good study of change over time in an agreement and thus the literature produced in the 1980s is valuable as well.

The possibility to study change over time within an agreement offers an alternative to static approaches to the study of international environmental agreements. CLRTAP, established in 1979, is a particularly good example of the influence of Cold War animosities and ideology in ‘high politics’ on international environmental policy-making. The fact that CLRTAP is a regional rather than global agreement helps to keep the relationship between different factors of analysis in proportion without sacrificing complexity or over-simplifying the problems underlying international environmental policy-making. In fact, there are more regional than global agreements and therefore regional agreements are more representative of international policy-making.¹

CLRTAP has a strong science and technology base. It therefore provides a good case study for analysing the role of science in the making of international environmental agreements. Likewise, the link between science and technology policy is relatively accessible to examination because of the open nature of the policy-making process in CLRTAP: it is a long-established institution that has well-defined regulatory structures and has developed strong institutional dynamics. All of this means that CLRTAP would be considered an effective agreement in traditional IR terms. Thus it is a good case to subject to wider analysis and to place in an environmental and holistic context. In this way, the strengths and weaknesses of traditional approaches can be evaluated and the results compared to the more comprehensive approach proposed in this book.

The Mediterranean Action Plan has been chosen because it is a controversial case. It is mainly known in the academic literature through Haas's study on epistemic communities which is based on MAP and sees it as an effective agreement thanks to the influence of epistemic communities (Haas, 1990). Otherwise MAP has largely been ignored by the IR academic community with the exception of a little-known study at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway which is more critical of its achievements (Skjaerseth, 1992b). However, I propose that the role of the epistemic community in MAP is negligible and has not contributed to either institutional effectiveness or environmental effectiveness. The state of the Mediterranean Sea was lamented at the 1972 Stockholm UN Conference on the Human Environment, with oil pollution being the main focus. A regional agreement was subsequently set up and the Barcelona Convention as the legal ingredient of this agreement signed in 1977.

MAP has to cope with the north-south divide in the region, thus reflecting the global development problem on a regional scale. In that sense it is a typical example of the tensions between environment and development, to be seen in both the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm and in the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. The fundamental principle underlying these agreements is that environment and development are connected. Therefore, development needs to take place with reference to environment and vice versa the study of environmental degradation needs to consider development issues.

This agreement cannot be approached with an emphasis on the traditional foci of IR literature because it is not propelled by considerations of national or economic interest, or rather these considerations are factors to be explained themselves as opposed to explanatory factors in Mediterranean policy-making. This means that environmental policy is not based on considerations of national economic interest. On the contrary, they prevent the making of environmental policy. This raises the question: ‘Why does this agreement exist at all since there is an apparent lack of motivation?’ Traditional IR approaches find it difficult to answer that, which is perhaps the reason that this agreement has received so little attention.

The problem of structure and agency

In what follows, the orthodox regime theories, which dominate the International Relations of Global Environmental Change, are subjected to a wide-ranging and eclectic criticism. This means that not only economic and political relationships pertaining to either acid rain or to the pollution of the Mediterranean Sea will be studied but, in addition, a holistic approach will be used, taking account of social, political, economic, scientific, technological, bureaucratic and temporal structures and factors.

This alternative approach gives equal importance to structure and agency. Traditionally, IR has been concerned more with agency than with structure, especially in the field of the environment. Structures do not exist in isolation. An object or practice is always part of several or many structures. This makes it difficult to attribute causation to a particular set of structures. Structures are not static but historically specific, which means that they cannot be explained by studying their individual parts only. Systems, as opposed to structures, relate to the whole of this set of interconnecting parts. A system has structures and agents. There are open and closed systems. A closed system forms a unit. An open system interacts with other systems, structures and agents.

In IR terms, system refers mainly to the international system, which is described as anarchic by realists, i.e. without structure and dominated by power issues. However, if structure is seen as dialectical and taking account of the unintentional and intentional, even a supposedly anarchical international system is structured. In this book, the term system is not used in a closed sense but it is assumed that systems are open by their very nature. Therefore, structures in a system may not originate from this system but can come from el...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Environment, Society and International Relations
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Part I Distinguishing between institutional and environmental effectiveness
• Part II Empirical studies
• Part III Environment, society and international relations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index