Global Environmental Politics

Pamela Chasek, David L. Downie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000317589
• Edition: 8
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Global Environmental Politics has provided an accurate, up-to-date, and unbiased understanding of the world's most pressing environmental issues for thirty years. The eighth edition continues this practice by covering critical new developments in global environmental politics and policymaking.

Updated case studies on key issues such as on climate change, endangered species, ozone depletion, desertification, whaling, hazardous wastes, toxic chemicals, and biodiversity detail the ongoing development of major environmental treaty regimes, and new case studies on mercury and marine biodiversity showcase the challenges of creating new treaties during a period of significant global change. There is also new material on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, trade and environment, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on environmental diplomacy. Updated information about global environmental trends, paradigms, and actors completes this comprehensive introduction to contemporary international environmental politics.

Global Environmental Politics is vital reading for students of environmental politics and anyone wishing to understand the current state of the field and to make informed decisions about which policies will best safeguard our environment for the future.

Chapter 1

The Emergence of Global Environmental Politics

Abstract

The emergence of environmental problems as major issues in world politics reflects growing awareness of the stresses human activities place on the earth’s resources and life support systems. This chapter first highlights global demographic, economic, and environmental macrotrends that drive global environmental politics. Then, in introducing the study of global environmental politics, the chapter outlines how much of global environmental politics focuses on efforts to negotiate and implement multilateral agreements, regimes, or other forms of cooperation to protect the environment and natural resources. The chapter concludes by examining how global environmental policy is shaped not only by political and economic interests, scientific developments, and technological innovation, but also by broad sets of beliefs held by the general population, governments, institutions, and political leaders. Some of these paradigms justify extensive, and sometimes essentially unlimited, exploitation of nature and discount the impact of pollution and deteriorating ecosystems on economic and social well-being. Despite widespread recognition of the need for sustainable development, globalization and the resilience of aspects of the traditional paradigms have complicated attempts to adopt more widespread practices and policies that would support global sustainable development.

Keywords: environmental footprint, globalization, paradigm shift, population growth, precautionary principle, regimes, sustainable development, sustainable consumption

Until the late 1980s, most governments regarded global environmental problems as minor issues, marginal both to their core national interests and to international politics in general. Then the rise of environmental movements in industrialized countries and the emergence of global environmental threats that affect the welfare of all humankind—such as ozone-layer depletion, climate change, and dangerous declines in the world’s fisheries—elevated global environmental issues to a higher status in world politics. Today, environmental issues are understood as globally important not only in their own right but also because they affect other aspects of world politics, including economic development, trade, human health, humanitarian action, and even security.¹

Global concern about the environment evolved in response to expanded scientific understanding of humanity’s increasing impact on the biosphere, including the atmosphere, oceans, forests, fresh water, soil cover, and many animal and plant species. Many by-products of economic growth—such as the burning of fossil fuels, air and water pollution, hazardous waste, toxic chemicals, plastics, and increased use of natural resources—put cumulative stresses on the physical environment that threaten human health and economic well-being. The realization that environmental threats have serious socioeconomic and human costs and that unilateral actions by individual countries cannot solve these problems produced increased calls for international cooperation to halt or reverse environmental degradation.

This chapter, in introducing global environmental politics, highlights important economic and environmental trends, introduces and defines key concepts, and traces some of the major intellectual currents and political developments central to the evolution of global environmental politics.

Global Macrotrends

Global demographic, economic, and environmental macrotrends describe key factors that drive global environmental politics.² Humanity’s potential stress on the environment is to some extent a function of three key factors: population, resource consumption, and waste production. One way to measure this impact is through an ecological footprint, which measures humanity’s demands on the biosphere by comparing humanity’s consumption against the earth’s regenerative capacity, or biocapacity. The ecological footprint measures the amount of key ecological assets—including cropland, pasture land, forest, and fishing grounds—“that a given population requires to produce the natural resources it consumes (including plant-based food and fiber products, livestock and fish products, timber and other forest products, space for urban infrastructure) and to absorb its waste, especially carbon emissions.”³ Since the 1970s, humanity’s annual demand on the natural world has exceeded what the earth can renew in a year. Today, we would need the equivalent of about 1.7 earths to provide the resources we consume annually and absorb the pollution and wastes we emit, and that number is increasing.⁴

Population Growth and Resource Consumption

Population growth affects the environment by increasing the demand for resources (including energy, water, food, and wood), the production of waste, and the emission of pollution. These relationships are not fixed, however, and most of the negative impacts result from how we carry out certain activities. Nevertheless, given the dominant economic and social patterns that have existed since the Industrial Revolution, the rapid growth of human population over the last 100 years has significantly influenced the environment and will continue to do so throughout this century.

Today, the global population is over 7.8 billion. It took fifty years for the global population to increase from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 2.5 billion in 1950. It then took only thirty-seven years to double, reaching 5 billion in 1987. It passed the 6-billion mark only twelve years later, reached 7 billion in late 2011, and is on pace to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050, and nearly 11 billion in 2100 (see Figure 1.1).⁵

Figure 1.1World Population Growth 1950–2100 (Projected)

Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2019). World Population Prospects 2019, custom data acquired via website.

Projections of future population growth depend on fertility trends, which are affected by economic development, education, disease patterns, population-related policies, and other factors. The world’s human population is currently growing at a rate slightly below 1.1 percent annually. Although significantly lower than the peak growth rate of 2.1 percent from 1965 to 1970, this still means a net addition of more than about 80 million people each year.

Historically, population growth has been accompanied by large increases in the consumption of natural resources, including fresh water, forests, topsoil, fish stocks, and fossil fuels. In addition, per capita consumption of natural resources has been rising much faster than population growth.⁶ This increase is positive in that it reflects improving living standards for billions of people. At the same time, the aggregate human consumption of natural resources has largely passed sustainable rates.⁷

Nearly all projected increases in human population will occur in developing countries, where per capita consumption is also increasing most rapidly (see Table 1.1). The United Nations (UN) estimates that Africa will add more than 1 billion people by 2050, about 50 percent of the global population increase. Eastern, central and southern Asia, which includes China, India, and other expanding economies, will add nearly 600 million. The global middle class is expected to grow from 1.8 billion in 2009 to nearly 4.9 billion by 2030.⁸ As more developing countries pursue the lifestyles of North America, Japan, and Europe, the future will likely bring higher per capita rates of consumption unless resources are consumed more efficiently and recycled more effectively.

Table 1.1Population of the World and Selected Regions and Groups of Countries for 2019, 2030, 2050, and 2100, According to the Medium-Variant Projection

	Population (millions)
	2019	2030	2050	2100
World	7713	8548	9735	10,875
Region
Sub-Saharan Africa	1066	1400	2118	3775
Northern Africa and western Asia	517	609	754	924
Central and southern Asia	1991	2227	2496	2334
Eastern and southeastern Asia	2335	2427	2411	1967
Latin America and the Caribbean	648	706	762	680
Australia/New Zealand	30	33	38	49
Oceania	12	15	19	26
Europe and North America	1114	1132	1136	1120
Least-developed countries	1033	1314	1877	3047
Landlocked developing countries	521	659	926	1406
Small Island developing states	71	78	87	88

Data source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2019). World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/423), page 6. https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2019_Highlights.pdf

Despite large increases in the consumer class in a number of developing countries, the current gulf in consumption levels within and among countries continues to draw attention, as do the social and environmental consequences that some analysts argue these gaps produce. High-income countries, such as the United States, have far greater ecologic...