ABSTRACT
Introduction An important starting point for understanding the focused processes unfolding within CLRTAP and the EU throughout the 1990s is a good understanding of the background and the reasons for which the processes were started. Moreover, in order to study the effect of institutional change over time, an understanding of the institutional baseline is simply indispensable. However, it should be made clear that this study makes absolutely no claim to throw any new light on air pollution politics in the 1980s. Especially the EU part of this chapter simply summarises several excellent existing studies. With this caveat, let us first turn to the all-European CLRTAP context before we zoom in on air pollution politics within the setting of the European Community. CLRTAP: The S 0 2 Protocol, the Baseline NOx Negotiations and the 1988 Protocol63 As indicated in Chapter One, it was acidification caused by sulphur dioxide emissions which was the initial, almost sole focus for scientific and political attention. As elaborated in Wettestad (1999), this transboundary problem must be characterised as strongly ‘malign’. Scientific uncertainty was substantial. Moreover, there were very ‘unfortunate’ transboundary elements, with large net exporters of pollutants such as the UK experiencing little domestic air pollution damage - while net importers such as Sweden and Norway experienced considerable damage due to vulnerable soil characteristics. A main polluter in this context was the industrial sector, and especially power stations. This part of the process was crowned with its first success by the establishment of the Helsinki Protocol in 1985, calling for a 30 percent reduction of S02 emissions by 1993.
