ABSTRACT
Since the early 1970s there has been a growing recognition that many environmental problems, in particular those of a transboundary nature, cannot be successfully tackled solely at the national level. A nation state can no longer act alone to solve many of the environmental problems that it faces. States have responded by creating international ‘regimes’ in an attempt to tackle problems ranging from ozone depletion and climate change to biodiversity loss and toxic-waste export. A regime is typically defined as a set of ‘implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations’ (Krasner, 1983, p. 2).1 However, some regimes are stronger than others and one of the aims of this chapter is to analyse why that should be so. For example, the ozone-depletion regime is taken to be one of the most effective, with the 1990 amendment to the Montreal Protocol requiring the phasing out of CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals by 2000. By comparison, the forestry regime is only held together by a weak set of principles initially agreed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. In the development of regimes difficulties arise from all sorts of directions. These include the basic definition of the environmental problem; disagreements over scientific and economic impacts; the actions of states who are willing to veto agreements that appear to conflict with their perceived interests; the vagueness of commitments and soft obligations embodied in many agreements; and problems with implementation and compliance. It is simply not possible to discuss here the development of each environmental regime and all the different factors alluded to above.2 Instead, the chapter will examine two factors which seem to militate against the creation of effective environmental regimes: the nature of the international political and economic systems. Sovereignty and the logic of capital accumulation are often seen as inimical to the development of adequate responses to global environmental problems. However, there have been over sixty multilateral environmental treaties signed in the last three decades and, in some areas, regimes are proving to be effective. To begin to understand why this might be the case it is necessary to focus on the activities of two different types of international actors and the role they play in global environmental politics: international organisations (IOs) such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In seeking to understand the nature of international environmental politics, it is not enough to simply focus on the actions of states and the multilateral agreements they sign.
