Self-Assessment Questions No. F1 (Chapter 5 – Topic No.

1)
Course Code: PS8 Description: Introduction to International Relations
Class Code DD13 I.D. No.: 2021-02535 Score: ___________
Name: ELOPRE, MIKAELA MAIE S. Date: 12/02/2024
College: Humanities and Social Sciences Block: A
Professor: Dr. Jocelyn T. Sorreda/CHUMSS – Social Sciences Department

Question No. 1. What are the possible connections, both negative and positive,
between globalization and environmental change?

Answer: Before the era of globalization there were two traditional environmental
concerns: conservation of natural resources and the damage caused by pollution. Neither
pollution nor wildlife respect international boundaries, and action to mitigate or conserve
sometimes had to involve more than one state. There were also some (mostly unsuccessful)
attempts to regulate exploitation of maritime resources lying beyond national jurisdiction,
including several multilateral fisheries commissions and the 1946 International Convention for
the Regulation of Whaling.
Post-Second World War global economic recovery brought with evidence of new
pollution, leading to international agreements in the 1950s and 1960s covering such matters as
discharges from oil tankers. This was, however, hardly the stuff of great power politics. Such
‘apolitical’ matters were the domain of new United Nations Specialized Agencies, for example
the Food and Agriculture Organization, but were hardly central to diplomacy at the UN General
Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
However, in 1968 the UNGA agreed to convene what became the 1972 UN Conference
on the Human Environment (UNCHE) ‘to focus governments’ attention and public opinion on the
importance and urgency of the question’. This conference led to the creation of the United
Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the establishment of environment departments by
many governments. Yet it was already clear that, for the countries of the South constituting the
majority in the UNGA—environmental questions could not be separated from their demands for
development, aid, and the restructuring of international economic relations. This provided the
political basis for the concept of sustainable development. Before the Brundtland Commission
formulated this concept in 1987 (WCED 1987), the environment had been edged off the
international agenda by the global economic downturn of the 1970s and then by the onset of the
second cold war.

Question No. 2. Why did environmental issues appear on the international agenda and
what were the key turning points?

Answer: Since the 1970s new forms of transnational pollution such as ‘acid rain’ had
been causing concern alongside dawning scientific realization that some environmental
problems the thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer and the possibility of climate change
were truly global in scale. The relaxation of East–West tension created the opportunity for a
second great UN conference in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Its title, the UN Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED), reflected the idea of sustainable development and an
accommodation between the environmental concerns of developed states and the economic
demands of the South. The 1992 UNCED or ‘Earth Summit’ was at the time the largest
international conference ever held. It raised the profile of the environment as an international
issue, while providing a platform for Agenda 21 (a substantial document issued by the
conference), international conventions on climate change, and the preservation of biodiversity.
The most serious arguments at UNCED were over aid pledges to finance the environmental
improvements under discussion. Rio also created a process at the UN to review the
implementation of its agreements. The Commission on Sustainable Development was to meet
at regular intervals and there were to be follow-up UNGA Special Sessions and full-scale
conferences.
On UNCED’s tenth anniversary in 2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Development
(WSSD) met at Johannesburg. The change of wording indicated how conceptions of
environment and development had shifted since the 1970s. Now discussion was embedded in
recognition of the importance of globalization and of the dire state of the African continent. The
eradication of poverty was clearly emphasized, along with practical progress in providing clean
water, sanitation, and agricultural improvements. One controversial element was the role to be
played in such provision by private public sector partnerships. Ten years later, and in the
shadow of a major downturn in the global economy, Rio + 20 met in Brazil. It attracted little
public attention, but it did resolve to set ‘sustainable development goals for the future’.

Question No. 3. Can international trade and environmental protection ever be

compatible?

Answer: The issue of the relationship between trade and environmental degradation is much
broader than disputes over the relationship between the WTO and particular multilateral
environmental agreements (MEAs). Globalization is partly shaped by the efforts of the WTO to
open protected markets and expand world trade. Many green activists argue that trade itself
damages the environment by destroying local sustainable agriculture and by encouraging the
environmentally damaging long-range transport of goods. The rearrangement of patterns of
production and consumption has indeed been one of the hallmarks of globalization. Liberal
economists and WTO advocates claim that if the ‘externalities’, such as the pollution caused,
can be factored into the price of a product, then trade can be beneficial to the environment
through allowing the most efficient allocation of resources. In this view, using trade restrictions
as a weapon to promote good environmental behavior would be unacceptable and, indeed, the
rules of the WTO allow only very limited restrictions to trade on environmental grounds (GATT
Article XXg), and certainly not on the basis of ‘process and production methods’. Several trade
dispute cases have largely confirmed that import controls cannot be used to promote more
sustainable or ethical production abroad, including the famous 1991 tuna–dolphin case which
upheld Mexican and EC complaints against US measures blocking imports of tuna caught with
the methods that kill dolphins as by-catch. Developing-country governments remain resistant to
green trade restrictions as a disguised form of protection for developed world markets.

Question No.4. Why did the framework convention/control protocol prove useful in the
cases of stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change?

Answer: An initial ‘framework’ convention signals concern and establishes mechanisms

for developing and sharing new scientific data, thereby providing the basis for taking action
through a ‘control’ protocol. Generating and sharing scientific information has long been a
function of international cooperation in such public bodies as the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) and myriad research organizations such as the International Council for
the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature
(IUCN). Disseminating scientific information on an international basis makes sense, but it needs
funding from governments because, except in areas such as pharmaceutical research, the
private sector has no incentive to do the work. International environmental regimes usually have
standing scientific committees and subsidiary bodies to support their work. Perhaps the greatest
international effort to generate new and authoritative scientific knowledge has been in the area
of climate change, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Question No. 5. How does the ‘tragedy of the commons’ analogy help to illustrate the
need for governance of the global commons?

Answer: Many writers, including Garrett Hardin (1968), who coined the term ‘tragedy of the
commons’, have observed an inherent conflict between individual and collective interest and
rationality in the use of property that is held in common. Hardin argued that individual actions in
exploiting an ‘open access’ resource will often bring collective disaster as the pasture, fish stock
(common pool), or river (common sink) concerned suffers ecological collapse through
overexploitation. Of course, no problem exists if the ‘carrying capacity’ of the commons is
enough for all to take as much as they require, but this is rarely now the case due to the
intensity of modern exploitation and production practices. At the same time, recent scientific
advances have sharpened humankind’s appreciation of the full extent of the damage imposed
on the earth’s ecosystems. Hardin’s solution to the dilemma enclosure of the commons through
privatization or nationalization has only limited applicability in the case of the global commons,
for two main reasons: it is physically or politically impossible to enclose them, and there is no
central world government to regulate their use.

Question No. 7. Describe the ‘free rider’ problem in relation to reducing global GHG
emissions?

Answer: Within two years the parties agreed to a protocol under which the production
and trading of CFCs and other ozone depleting substances would be progressively phased out.
The developed countries achieved this for CFCs by 1996 and Meetings of the Parties have
continued to work on the elimination of other substances since that time. There was some initial
resistance from European chemical producers, but the US side had a real incentive to ensure
international agreement because otherwise its chemical industry would remain at a commercial
disadvantage. The other problem faced by the negotiators involved developing countries, which
themselves were manufacturing CFC products. They were compensated by a fund, set up in
1990, to finance the provision of alternative non-CFC technologies for the developing world. The
damage to the ozone layer will not be repaired until the latter part of the twenty-first century,
given the long atmospheric lifetimes of the chemicals involved. However, human behavior has
been significantly altered to the extent that the scientific subsidiary body of the Montreal
Protocol has been able to report a measurable reduction in the atmospheric concentration of
CFCs.

Question No. 8. Consider the possible security implications of the climate predictions
made by IPCC.

Answer: The exact consequences of this are difficult to predict on the basis of current
climate modelling, but sea level rises and turbulent weather are generally expected. According
to international consensus, the avoidance of dangerous climate change requires that global
mean temperature rises should be held well below 2°C and that limiting it to 1.5°C would be
desirable (Paris Agreement 2015, Art.2a). In the first decades of the twenty-first century,
unusual weather patterns, storm events, and the melting of polar ice sheets have added a
dimension of public concern to the fears expressed by the scientific community.
Climate change is really not a ‘normal’ international environmental problem—it threatens
huge changes in living conditions and challenges existing patterns of energy use and security.
There is almost no dimension of international relations that it does not actually or potentially
affect, and it has already been discussed at G8 summits and in UN meetings at the highest
political levels, although its urgency has sometimes been obscured by the persistent problems
of the global economy.

To understand the magnitude of the climate problem, a comparison may be drawn with
the stratospheric ozone issue discussed above. There are some similarities. CFCs
(chlorofluorocarbons) are in themselves greenhouse gases and the international legal texts on
climate change make it clear that controlling them is the responsibility of the Montreal Protocol.
Also, the experience with stratospheric ozone and other recent conventions has clearly
influenced efforts to build a climate change regime based on a framework convention followed
by a protocol.