ABSTRACT
The environment – or non-human world – is comparatively ‘new’ to politics and, as an alternative to human interests, has only been on the agenda of international relations since the late 1960s. That is not to say, however, that problems of environmental change are in any way new. The extinction of certain animal species due to human recklessness and the decline of woodland areas through over-exploitation are centuries-old phenomena. The dodo, moa, and Steller’s sea cow, for example, were hunted to extinction before the 20th century. Other notable changes to the natural environment have occurred entirely independently of human action. The ‘Cretaceous/Tertiary Impact’, caused by either a comet or an asteroid, created the 250 km wide Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico, widely held to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs and other life forms long before the dawn of humanity. In addition, the temperature of the Earth has periodically naturally warmed and cooled throughout human and pre-human history, with various effects on the natural environment. The science of understanding such matters of environmental change emerged in the 19th
century and was given the name ecology by the German biologist Haeckel (Haeckel 1866). The science of ecology brought recognition of natural systemic phenomena linking disparate life forms such as food chains, the carbon cycle and evolution, and an understanding of humanity’s place within the environment. Published shortly before this first usage of the term ecology in 1864, George Perkins Marsh’s Man and Nature is widely regarded as the first ecological book in that it used empirical data to prove the effect of human activity on woodlands and waterways (see Box 1.1). In the wake of this scientific revolution of the 1860s domestic policies to conserve nature
and pressure groups campaigning for conservation began to emerge in the US and some Western European states. Yellowstone became the US’s first National Park in 1872, and the British Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) became the world’s first conservation pressure group when it was founded in 1889, as a result of fears that the grebe was in danger of extinction due to the fashion of using its feathers for hats. In the US the Sierra Club, founded in 1892, was the pioneer of non-governmental conservation groups seeking to build upon the idea of national parks to protect the natural environment, established with Yellowstone. The origins of international policy on issues of environmental change can also be traced back
as far as the late 19th century’s then unparalleled industrialization and globalization. The year
1889 saw the first international policy dealing with flora, with an international convention to prevent the spread of the disease phylloxera in grapes. Then, in 1902, the Convention on the Protection of Birds Useful to Agriculture was the first international legal instrument on animal conservation. These were, however, motivated by economic rather than environmental concerns. Wine and internationally traded food were at stake rather than the flora and fauna themselves. The grapes and birds being protected were the subject of such concern because of their instrumental rather than intrinsic value. This distinction is the key to determining whether a political issue is truly environmental/ecological (Greens generally prefer the latter term since ‘environmental’ can be thought to imply that the non-human world is a backdrop to the human world rather than the two co-existing in a single ecosystem). In determining whether a given issue is an environmental one the key question is: Is the environment to be protected for its own sake or just when this furthers human interests? Conservation policies, driven by the aesthetics of loving the countryside or preserving rural
lifestyles, permeated the domestic politics of some developed countries in the early 20th century, even including Nazi Germany. The Nazis linked natural and racial German purity, as was encapsulated in their slogan ‘blood and soil’, and Agriculture Minister Richard Darre enacted some policies in line with this, such as the 1935 Reich Law for the Protection of Nature. Hence, the politics of conservation, whilst giving value to the environment and even restricting human interests as part of this policy, is still instrumental or ‘anthropocentric’ since it is about preservation for humanity’s sake. Conservation is about the preservation of traditional rural culture for human enrichment, be it practical or spiritual. The support for rural preservation by hunting lobbyists is an obvious example of non-ecocentric conservationism (although it is worth noting that the Nazis banned hunting with hounds – so their belief in rural conservation was of a romanticized political conservatism). National conservation policy gradually internationalized during the 20th century. Since animals
are, of course, not confined by state frontiers, the RSPB, Sierra Club and other groups, after the
SecondWorld War, came to orientate their campaigns through the United Nations (UN). Several groups, principally from the UK and the US, worked with the newly established United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to found the International Union for the Preservation of Nature (IUPN) in 1948 (Adams 2004: 43-62). The IUPN, a hybrid intergovernmental and non-governmental organization, later changed its title to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and became a focus of international information exchange on endangered species, based on the compilation of ‘Red Lists’ of flora and fauna close to extinction throughout the world. A regime specific to the conservation of whales can also be dated back to the 1940s but, similarly, did not become legally significant until several decades later.1 The International Whaling Commission (IWC) was set up in 1946, due to concerns at the likely extinction of certain species, but was verymuch anthropocentric as it was guided by the desire of whaling states to continue their practices in a manner that could sustain hunting. Later in 1959, in a prelude to the international ecocentric turn, the Antarctic Treaty established the idea of a conservation park on an international scale, by outlawing industrialization and sovereign claims on the frozen continent in a successful agreement that still holds firm today. The Antarctic Treaty stands as a notable international political achievement, although the inhospitality of the continent meant that no significant potential for national economic development was being stifled in agreeing to its conservation (see Box 1.2).
