ABSTRACT
The European regional situation is an interesting test of the ability of nation-states to manage their natural environments. At least three interrelated features of the European region solicit the scholar's interest. West Germany's internal environmental situation appears in one form or another all over Europe, but West Germany's situation also dramatizes the transnational dimensions of European pollution problems. Industrial pollution has had a heavy impact in such widespread areas as the Ural Mountains, Polish Silesia, Czech Sudetenland, the Angara-Baikal area in Siberia and East Germany's Saxony. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has attracted critical scrutiny and sparked controversy by its organizational entry into the environmental field in 1969. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is primarily concerned with the promotion of free trade and economic growth among 23 nations of the industrialized West, as well as coordinating Western aid to the developing countries.
