Deliberating Global Environmental Politics

Environmental Cooperation Global environmental and resource concerns like hunger, population growth, loss of biological diversity, deforestation, and the so-called 'greenhouse effect' are now emerging on the peace and security research agendas (see Brock, 1991; Levy, 1995). In part, this is because of the alleged relationship between 'ecological scarcity' and violent conflict (Homer-Dixon, 1991). Another explanation is the significant global threat thought to be posed by environmental degradation. The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987, p. 23) has warned that 'the security, well-being, and very survival of the planet' are at stake. Because of these perils, the WCED recommends that states pursue 'sustainable development'. In practice, meeting the needs of today without threatening the needs of tomorrow would seem to require unprecedented global collaboration. The Commission's Chair, Gro Harlem Brundtland, wrote (in WCED, 1987, p. x) that perhaps the 'most urgent task today is to persuade nations of the need to return to multilateralism'. Since calls for united global action by UN-affiliated groups can sound suspiciously like self-serving platitudes, it is worthwhile to explain the need for environmental cooperation. The simplest rationale is ecological. Resources like the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere are shared and must be jointly managed. Other considerations are political and economic. Some form of cooperation will be required to solve problems of global proportions. In the words of the neorealist Kenneth N. Waltz (1979, pp. 209f.), serious concerns like 'poverty, population, [and] pollution,' will 'never be solved by one nation unaided ... no one will deny that collective efforts are needed if common problems are to be solved or somehow managed'. Because of wide gaps in the global distribution of power and wealth, environmental problems related to this disparity can only be addressed collectively. In the developing world, hundreds of millions of people already live in abject poverty, and tax their limited resource base. Some of the least affluent nations have suffered virtual ecological collapse as forests or fisheries have disappeared from years of unsustainable economic activity. Developing states must gain long-term access to global material and economic resources, or else their poverty will lead them to exhaust limited resources or irrevocably sully the environment. The world's poor and weak states will probably not be able to resolve their environmental and resource problems without the cooperation and assistance of the richer, more powerful states and vice versa. Indeed, Ken Conca (1993, p. 319) claims that, because of interdependence, 'the South appears to hold an effective veto over ... international environmental protection merely by staying on its current course'.