ABSTRACT
Effective leader states are vital to international environmental problemsolving. But how and why do certain states become leaders and others not? What are the sources and secrets of effective state leadership on international environmental issues? In this chapter, we seek to answer this question in a case study of Canada’s leadership role on the transboundary issue of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Leadership is a complex and elusive concept. We focus on Canada’s foreign policy-making process. Specifically, we ask: What actors and factors have influenced Canada’s foreign policy on POPs and how did they contribute to its leadership on the issue? More than any other state, Canada was responsible for scientifically iden-
tifying the transboundary POPs issue in the mid-to late-1980s. Canada also helped initiate and was heavily involved in negotiations for a POPs protocol under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s (UNECE) Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP), signed in 1998. This was the first international agreement to explicitly address POPs. Similarly, Canada was a prime mover to establish a global POPs treaty. These efforts culminated in the United Nations Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (hereafter referred to as the Stockholm Convention), signed in 2001. Since 2001, Canada has remained active during the implementation phase of these agreements. In the next section, a brief introduction to the transboundary POPs pro-
blem is presented. In the following section, Canada’s foreign policy-making on POPs is described chronologically through four time-periods. Then we analyze “the making of an environmental leader” and codify the actors and factors that have shaped Canada’s foreign policy on POPs and contributed to its leadership. The final section contains lessons for effective state leadership on international environmental issues derived from this case study.
