ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how international environmental regimes can contribute to sustainable development. It argues that in some issue areas, states establish and maintain not only global regimes but also regional ones to ensure an effective protection of the environment. The chapter describes the evolutionary development and shows that the adoption of regional agreements banning the import of hazardous waste created the pressure necessary for the global regime to adapt. There was the group of countries, among them most of the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development nations that generally wanted the international hazardous waste trade to continue to be legal. This group advocated regulation to control the international hazardous waste trade based on prior informed consent procedures, with the basic goal of being able to distinguish between legal and illegal shipments of hazardous wastes. Nationally or regionally adopted import bans provided these states with some additional protection from Northern firms' using them as dumping grounds for their hazardous waste.
