Montreal Protocol

9 Key excerpts on "Montreal Protocol"

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  International Environmental Law

  A Case Study Analysis

  • Gerry Nagtzaam, Evan van Hook, Douglas Guilfoyle(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Comptes Rendus Geoscience (2018), 350 (7), 425–31, 425–6.

  160     Mintz, “Keeping Pandora’s Box Shut: A Critical Assessment of the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer,” 568.

  161     Elrifi, “Protection of the Ozone Layer,” 412.

  162     Mossos, “The Montreal Protocol and the Difficulty with International Change,” 12.

  163     Landers, “The Black Market Trade in Chlorofluorocarbons,” 469.

  164     Green, “Lessons from the Montreal Protocol: Guidance for the Next International Climate Change Agreement,” 256.

  165     Benedick, Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet , 102.

  166     Mark W. Roberts, “Finishing the Job: The Montreal Protocol Moves to Phase Down Hydrofluorocarbons,” Review of European, Comparative & International environmental Law (2017), 66 (3), 220–30, 221.

  167     P. Canan, S. O. Anderson, N. Reichman, B. Gareau, “Introduction to the Special Issue on Ozone Layer Protection and Climate Change: The Extraordinary Experience of Building the Montreal Protocol, Lessons Learned, and Hopes for Future Climate Change Efforts,” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences (2015), 5 (2), 111–21, 113. Environmental Effects Assessment Panel, “2018 Quadrennial Assessment on the Interactions of Stratospheric Ozone Depletion, UV Radiation, and Climate Change,” 2018, vii.

  168     E. Melanie DePuis and Brian J. Gareau, “Neoliberal Knowledge: The Decline of Technocracy and the Weakening of the Montreal Protocol,” Social Science Quarterly

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  Ozone Connections

  Expert Networks in Global Environmental Governance

  • Penelope Canan, Nancy Reichman(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  2 The Montreal Protocol A most remarkable treaty

  Global environmental agreements require reconciliation of an inherent tension between narrow business interests and broad public benefits. This difficult feat was achieved in the successful negotiation of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. This global treaty is heralded as the most successful attempt at protection of a global commons.

  Joanne M. Kauffman

  The Montreal Protocol has been a successful global experiment for the United Nations (UN). No longer merely a ‘court of international public opinion’ and moral persuasion, the UN has demonstrated through the Protocol that it can build global partnerships and create the institutional space for new types of governance that transcend or blur traditional national boundaries. The historic treaty for global ozone-layer protection mirrors the transition of the UN from an organisation with a mind-set born of World War 2, struggling to mediate conflicts between sovereign nations, to a forum for proactive agreements on pressing planetary issues. Both the Montreal Protocol (1987) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the institution established in 1972 that led to the Protocol’s creation and implementation, have become models of global citizenship rather than extensions of state territoriality. The UN’s future role is likely to further an international order that is binding as a matter of necessity, not because of an individual state’s consent. This is because, as a matter of human survival, global challenges such as desertification, starvation, stratospheric ozone and climate change require collective action at the global level (Delbruck 1997).

  The Montreal Protocol has also been a successful global experiment for national governments, corporations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and grass-roots environmental groups. And, while individual citizens around the world have also benefited, they have not been required to examine or change much of their behaviour. For ‘regular folks’, other than increasing the use of sunscreen products they did not have to make substantial changes in daily behaviour.1

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  Many Voices

  Multilateral Negotiations In The World Arena

  • Abiodun Williams(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Negotiating the Montreal Ozone Protocol

  This chapter discusses the negotiations that led to the diplomatic conference in Montreal, in September 1987, at which an international protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer was concluded. It is an example of a medium-sized multi-lateral negotiation. The subject of this case study is the environment, which is gaining increasing priority on the international diplomatic agenda, and which will be the focus of more multilateral negotiations in the future. The case illustrates that negotiators must be sensitive to their different domestic constituencies in order to secure agreements that will be accepted. It stresses the crucial role an international organization or specialized agency, in this case the United Nations Environmental Program, can play in the negotiating process.

  Deciding to Negotiate

  The Case for an International Agreement to Protect the Ozone Layer

  What scientists today refer to as the ozone layer is a region approximately 10 kilometers (km) wide in the part of the earth’s upper atmosphere called the stratosphere. In this region, the concentration of ozone—a pale blue gas formed from the effect of electrical discharges (e.g., lightning) on oxygen-is some 10 parts per million (ppm), compared to 0.04 ppm in the part of the atmosphere that we breathe, the troposphere. And at this level of concentration (which, if it were compressed to that of air pressure on the earth’s surface, would be less than one-eighth of an inch thick), ozone in the stratosphere absorbs 99 percent of the ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Hence, without this small ozone layer, Earth would be effectively sterilized and devoid of life as we know it.

  Apparently, to the extent that ozone is depleted-a process that will be described below¯more of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation will reach the earth’s surface. Dermatologists have long believed that enhanced ultraviolet radiation is directly related to the incidence of skin cancer, now said to be at epidemic proportions in the United States, where more than half a million new cases are reported each year, and rapidly increasing in other countries.1 Working together with atmospheric scientists, physicians have developed a “rule of thumb … that if you had an ‘x’ percent drop in ozone you might expect about a two or three times ‘x’ percent increase in skin cancer assuming that living styles remain constant.”2

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  Worst-Case Scenarios

  • Cass R. Sunstein, Cass R Sunstein(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Harvard University Press

    (Publisher)

  As nations have complied with their obliga-tions, global emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals have been re-duced by over 95 percent, and atmospheric concentrations of these chemicals have been declining since 1994. By 2060, the ozone layer is expected to return to its natural state. The Montreal Protocol thus stands as a spectacular success story in environmental protection. Its success owes a great deal to the ac-tions not only of the United States government, which played an aggressive role in producing the protocol, but also to American companies, which stood in the forefront of technical innovation leading to substitutes for ozone-depleting chemicals. With climate change, the situation is altogether different. To be sure, an international agreement, produced in Kyoto in 1997, did go into force in 2005, when Russia ratified it; the Kyoto Protocol has now been ratified by over 130 nations. But many countries are unlikely to comply with their obligations under the protocol, and the United States has firmly rejected the agreement, with unani-mous bipartisan opposition to ratification. Partly as a result, world-wide emissions of greenhouse gases are projected to rise at a rapid rate in coming decades. Why was the Montreal Protocol so much more successful than the Kyoto Protocol? I shall suggest here that both the success in Montreal and the mixed picture in Kyoto were driven largely by decisions of the United States, based on a domestic cost-benefit analysis. To the United States, the monetized benefits of the Mon-treal Protocol dwarfed the monetized costs, and hence the circum-stances were extremely promising for American support and even enthusiasm for the agreement. As we will see, the United States had so much to lose from depletion of the ozone layer that it would A Tale of Two Protocols 73 have been worthwhile for the nation unilaterally to take the steps required by the Montreal Protocol.

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  International Environmental Justice

  A North-South Dimension

  • Ruchi Anand(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 4 Ozone Politics The Fund of Montreal Protocol has demonstrated that cooperation is indeed possible, that when the process of cooperation is real, it is not a question of donors and recipients but rather of countries, which, even at different stages of development, share a common objective and decide each to contribute something to achieve such an objective, be it financial resources, political will, technical or scientific knowledge, or any other element. In this sense, the protection or sustainable use of the environment enjoys today a propitious opportunity to help stimulate international cooperation where the political will of all and the generosity of those who have the most can help make the Earth a clean, lovely, and valuable planet for all of us, our children and for the children or our children (Mateos 1998, 116). 4.1 Introduction The ozone regime 1 is often cited as an exemplary model of what a successful international environmental lawmaking could look like. It is viewed as a success; first in terms of securing cooperation from countries of the North and South, second, in terms of the provisions that were negotiated, distributing costs and benefits of environmental protection as evenly as it could among its participants and third, in terms of having shown positive results in terms of reductions in the consumption and production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and ozone depleting substances (ODSs). The success of the ozone regime was not achieved without overcoming many obstacles, quite similar to ones faced by other international environmental problems: “genuine scientific uncertainty over the scale of the harm, a sharply divided international community, potentially high transition costs, and a global problem requiring a global solution” (Hunter et al. 1998, 545)

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  Protecting the Ozone Layer

  The United Nations History

  • Stephen O Andersen, K Madhava Sarma, Stephen O. Andersen, K.Madhava Sarma(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 6 Implementation of the Montreal Protocol Introduction

  The implementation of the Montreal Protocol has benefited from the public and political reaction to the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, the health and ecological consequences of ozone depletion, and the scientific consensus that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting substances (ODSs) were the cause of that depletion. The Protocol has elicited the cooperation of a large number of highly diverse organizations.

  The UNEP Secretariat for the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol, called the Ozone Secretariat, provides the requisite support to the Meetings of the Parties in strengthening the Protocol, monitoring implementation, and reporting problems to Parties when necessary. The Protocol’s Implementation Committee views its mandate widely and takes a pro-active stand in anticipating problems and recommending solutions to the Meetings of the Parties. The Meetings of the Parties make decisions on non-compliance by the Parties in a spirit of sympathy, assistance and, where necessary, sternness, and help countries achieve compliance.

  The Executive Committee of the Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol, assisted by the Fund Secretariat, has given speedy approval to projects that lead to the phase-out of ODSs by the industries in developing countries that operate under Article 5, Paragraph 1. Article 5 specifies the concessions to the countries that qualify as ‘developing’, as agreed by a Meeting of the Parties, and whose consumption of ODSs per capita is below the limits specified in Article 5. The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has ensured that the Russian Federation and other countries with economies in transition return to the path of compliance despite their grave social and economic problems.

  Many United Nations agencies are actively involved in the implementation of the Protocol. The UNDP, World Bank and UNEP are the implementing agencies of the Multilateral Fund and GEF. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) is an implementing agency of the Multilateral Fund. The WMO is the coordinating agency for assessment of the state of the ozone layer. The World Customs Organization was the authority that harmonized the commodity-numbering system for monitoring trade in ODSs. The WHO is the source of information on the adverse effects of methyl bromide. The FAO is the source of information about methyl bromide and its alternatives. Organizations involved in promoting the Protocol’s implementation include: regional development banks such as the Asian Development Bank; regional United Nations economic and social organizations such as the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (ESCAP) and the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE); and regional political organizations such as the African Ministers Council on Environment, the Council of the Arab Ministers Responsible for the Environment, and the Forum of Ministers of the Environment for Latin American and the Caribbean Countries.

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  Technology Transfer for the Ozone Layer

  Lessons for Climate Change

  • Stephen O. Andersen, K. Madhava Sarma, Kristen N. Taddonio(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The control measures for the phaseout of ODS production and consumption are specified on the basis of ‘ODP-weighted’ quantities for ‘groups’ of chemically similar gases. The quantities are calculated by multiplying the quantity of each controlled substance by its ozone depletion potential (ODP), totalling within each group. This flexibility allows each Party to choose to produce and consume the combination of controlled chemicals that best suits its needs. The Protocol encourages the practices of recovery and recycling by not counting those quantities recovered and recycled, and allows Parties to credit quantities destroyed against total production and consumption. There are three classes of exceptions to the phaseout: feedstocks to other industries in which ODSs are almost entirely consumed; process agents, in which emissions are tightly controlled; and applications authorized by Meetings of Parties for essential use (such as metered-dose inhalers for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).

  The original 1987 Montreal Protocol entered into force on 1 January 1989. Each country had a different internal ratification process. In the US, for example, Congress had to vote in favour of the US becoming a Party. The control measures of the 1987 Montreal Protocol were made stricter with the adjustments and amendments to the Protocol approved by the Parties in 1990, 1992, 1995, 1997 and 1999; each time the Protocol was strengthened through amendments, Parties had to ratify them. Each adjustment entered into force at a specified date. At any point in time, some countries that had ratified the Montreal Protocol may not have ratified all of its amendments. The Ozone Secretariat website (http://ozone.unep.org ) contains the status of ratification and is updated periodically.

  Structure of the Montreal Protocol and Party obligations

  All Parties to the Montreal Protocol have the obligation to implement the Articles thereof. Certain key points are as follows: •  Article 2 mandates the phaseout of ODSs by the Parties according to a prescribed timetable;

  •  Article 4 obliges all Parties to ban trade in ODSs with non-Parties. The Article provides for identification of products containing ODSs and products made using, but not containing, ODSs. Article 4A specifies the obligations for control of trade between the Parties;

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  From Precaution to Profit

  Contemporary Challenges to Environmental Protection in the Montreal Protocol

  • Brian Gareau(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  22 Introduction shows that it is perhaps just as keen on protecting the legiti-macy of U.S.-based scientific knowledge as the spokesperson for global science/knowledge on MeBr and its alternatives. Ironically, perhaps, changes in the rules and political attitudes of the Montreal Protocol from precaution (the CFC case) to ones based on neoliberal principles have made the MeBr con-troversy possible. This book, then, will investigate the intricate connections between—or the coproduction of—science and political economy in a newly neoliberalized ozone governance world. It is an environmental governance world that has grad-ually shifted away from precaution-first toward profit-first tenets, from social concerns to individual concerns, from public knowledge to private-sector science. Theoretical Approach To date, the Montreal Protocol has generated rather scant discussion in sociology, with Penelope Canan and Nancy Reichman’s intensive investigation being a noteworthy excep-tion. 45 Sociology, however, has a long history of analyzing the global political economy, the “world polity,” and the impact of capital and power on social (and socio-ecological) relations, going as far back as Karl Marx. 46 My theoretical approach contributes a critical component to the important “social cap-ital” assessment of the Montreal Protocol presented by Canan and Reichman. Drawing from critiques of recent theorizations of social capital, I will show how social networks are often formed to benefit those with power at the expense of others. The achievement of social networks embodies a social construction that is attached to class differences and other forms of exploitation. The MeBr phaseout clearly benefits the powerful more than less-powerful actors in the social Introduction 23 networks of the Protocol and beyond.

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  Transnational Environmental Policy

  Reconstructing Ozone

  • Reiner Grundmann(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Today, there is a vast participation of Southern hemisphere countries in the Montreal Protocol. During the period of establishing the Montreal Protocol, these played a relative minor role. Since both the problem and the scientific research originated in the Northern countries, they took no great interest in the issue. Some countries, like China and India, saw the Montreal Protocol as inequitable and refused to sign it. Although their CFC production at the time was minimal, they were expected to consume 30 per cent of the world production by the year 2000. Both demanded adequate financial support and clearly defined access to alternative technologies before signing up (Wood 1993; also see below, the role of the Multilateral Fund).

  The Montreal Protocol: a precautionary treaty?

  Parson (1993:60) points out that from a purely scientific point of view there was no justification for the 50 per cent solution at Montreal. Either a much greater reduction should have been the result, or none at all. The 50 per cent solution, indeed, seems a clear indicator that the result can be traced back to a negotiated compromise in which the obvious solution in the middle (Schelling 1960) was chosen; almost the exact arithmetic mean of the opening positions of the USA and the EC (95 per cent versus 20 per cent reduction), and a compromise in the face of the still uncertain scientific evaluation of the problem.

  Even if at the time of the treaty signing in Montreal not all the parties to the agreement were yet convinced of a comprehensive solution, the advocacy network, led by just such a conviction, managed to neutralise the potential hangers-back and ultimately even to win them over. The 95 per cent reduction that had originally been demanded for Montreal was ultimately achieved in the London amendments to the Montreal Protocol.

  This success of the advocacy network during the negotiations can be traced back to the combination of an official and an unofficial rationale, both of which mobilised scientific resources. The official position emphasised its precautionary character, while alarm bells were sounded behind the scenes. Officially, a uniform scientific basis for the Montreal measures was created by coordinating different scenarios regarding future global ozone depletion. Leading modellers met in April 1987 at the behest of UNEP at a conference in Würzburg and came to an agreement on the various methods and parameters of their models (UNEP 1987). The Würzburg meeting was the advocacy coalition’s attempt to refute the arguments of their opponents. The latter argued that the different models came to different results. Moreover, Soviet scientists claimed that there were no anthropogenic effects on the ozone layer: ‘The Soviets..had to be convinced at that meeting that there is a man-made effect. Before that they were insisting that there was no effect since they didn’t want any control’ (UNPO 20).1 Another point was the question whether, besides the ozone hole, there was measurable damage to the global ozone layer. Ten days before the negotiations began in Montreal, Bob Watson attempted to establish a connection with long-term global ozone trends. The New Scientist quoted Watson to the effect that a global ozone decline of about 3 per cent had occurred, almost certainly attributable to CFCs (New Scientist,

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