Politics and the environment

Gwyn Prins outlines the environmental issues coming onto the international policy agenda and argues that governments will find it hard to address these issues effectively because environmental problems are not susceptible to normal political treatment. Environmental effects are synergistic, and environmental problems cannot be successfully tackled discretely, one by one. Their successful resolution would require a concerted, equally synergistic response unprecedented in international or domestic politics. Prins argues that patterns of politics will be changed by the emergence of these issues onto the political agenda. Despite these difficulties, however, we have a powerful new means to respond to environmental problems and exert pressure on governments in the empowering effects of the information technology revolution.