Building international consensus on how to deal with global environmental problems is an essential but rarely easy task. In formulating international policy on global warming and other transnational environmental issues, a recent landmark agreement concerning the production and use of chloroflourocarbons that deplete stratospheric ozone offers some useful insights.
In the twenty years since the first Earth Day there has been a growing tendency to view environmental issues, both ecologically and politically, from a global perspective. Scientists and policymakers are beginning to realize that while environmental problems such as deforestation, desertification, and air and water pollution are regional in their manifestation, they are also linked globally. They are also beginning to understand that other environmental problems such as stratospheric ozone depletion and greenhouse warming are truly global in scope. The international community now recognizes that these problems must be dealt with as global issues.
The recent Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is a manifestation of the globalization of environmental issues. A landmark international agreement, the Montreal Protocol was a response to the growing international consensus on the need to protect stratospheric ozone from depletion by chloroflourocarbons (CFCs)—synthetic chemical compounds used as coolants, foam-blowing agents, aerosol propellants, and cleaning solvents. In the stratosphere CFCs work catalytically to destroy the ozone layer, which shields the earth from the harmful ultraviolet radiation known as UV-B. An increase in the amount of UV-B radiation that reaches the earth's surface could result in an increased rate of skin cancer and cataracts in humans, and could cause other biological and environmental damage as well.
Like stratospheric ozone depletion, global warming has begun to receive worldwide attention. Participants in meetings such as the 1988 Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere have urged an international response to the problem of global warming, as did heads of state convening in the Hague and in Paris in 1989. As a result of increased attention to this phenomenon, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is investigating international policy responses to climate change.
Global warming is also a major domestic political issue in many countries, including the United States and Canada, as well as among the member nations of the European Community. In the United States, for example, legislation has been proposed in Congress to control emissions of greenhouse gases, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has suggested a range of domestic and international policy options for controlling the rate of global warming.
Several factors have spurred the rise of global warming on the international environmental agenda. These include growing scientific evidence concerning the role of carbon dioxide and other trace gases as greenhouse gases, and improved global circulation models that demonstrate that the emission of these greenhouse gases could result in a global warming of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees centigrade—an increase that could have profound climatic effects. In addition, recent studies have revealed the potential impacts of a greenhouse-induced climatic change. For example, rising sea levels could flood low-lying coastal areas, and shifting agricultural patterns necessitated by climate changes could have significant regional and global implications. Moreover, the growing inclination of scientists and. policymakers to consider environmental issues from a global perspective has intensified concern about the global warming problem.
Scientists and policymakers now tend to view environmental issues from a global perspective.
However, formulating international agreements for responding to problems of global environmental change is a complex undertaking. The task is complicated by differences among nations in their perceptions of environmental problems and by the reality that the costs and benefits of implementing international agreements on the environment are seldom evenly distributed. Yet mitigation of truly global environmental problems such as ozone depletion and global warming ultimately requires international co-operation such as that reflected in the successful negotiation of the Montreal Protocol. The product of a seventeen-year policymaking process, the Protocol was built on a complicated set of policy decisions and actions. It is this history that gives the Protocol its meaning and credibility in a political context and that suggests its value as a model for forging international agreements concerning other global environmental problems.
The Montreal Protocol outlines specific measures and timetables for reducing production and consumption of CFCs and halons—other ozone-depleting compounds that are used in fire extinguishers. Under the provisions of the Protocol, developed countries must freeze production of CFCs at 1986 levels beginning in 1989. They must reduce production to 80 percent of 1986 levels by 1994 and to 50 percent of 1986 levels by 1999. Developing countries are allowed a ten-year delay in implementing provisions as long as production of CFCs does not exceed a specified limit. The Protocol was implemented in January 1989.
A flexible agreement, the Protocol is subject to reevaluation as new scientific information emerges. In fact, it is already being revised as a result of more conclusive evidence that CFCs are at least partly responsible for ozone depletion over the Antarctic and new findings suggesting that CFCs may also be responsible for ozone depletion over mid- and high-latitude areas of the northern hemisphere. It now appears likely that an 85 percent reduction or full phase-out of ozone-depleting compounds will be adopted.
Emergence of the CFC issue
The issue of stratospheric ozone depletion was first raised in the United States in 1970 in the context of concern over potential impacts on the ozone layer from the proposed large commercial fleet of high-flying supersonic transports (SSTs). However, ozone depletion did not become an important issue on the environmental and political agendas in the United States until the discovery, in 1974, that CFCs used as aerosol propellants could deplete stratospheric ozone. As a result of the scientific and political debate following this discovery, the EPA banned the nonessential use of CFCs as aerosol propellants in 1978. Canada, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark took similar action.
By the late 1970s, it was becoming clear that ozone depletion was a global problem and that an effective response would have to be international in scope. Several international organizations became actively involved in the issue, inluding the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Meteorological Organization, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. They began coordinating international research on and monitoring of the CFC/ozone depletion problem.
In 1981, the United Nations Environment Programme began drafting an ozone protection convention. The resulting Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer was adopted by 43 nations at a conference in March 1985 Although no specific protocol on the control of CFCs was included, the convention did outline the responsibilities of nations for protecting human health and the environment from the adverse effects of human activities that modify the ozone layer. It also called for international cooperation in research, monitoring, and information exchange and for continued discussion of CFC controls.
In 1986, a new sense of urgency arose concerning stratospheric ozone depletion. Talks on a CFC protocol to the Vienna Convention resumed in December 1986. A few months later—influenced by new scientific evidence and by pressure from the public, politicians, and environmental groups—negotiators reached an initial compromise on the need for a 50 percent reduction in CFC production and a freeze on halon production. The resulting Montreal Protocol represents a remarkable achievement in building consensus and fostering compromise among parties with varied and competing interests. It evolved from a decision-making environment in which key stakeholders such as the scientific community, industry, governments, international agencies, and nongovernmental organizations could develop a shared understanding of the CFC/ozone depletion problem and approaches for dealing with it.
Credit: E. I. du PONT de Nemours & COMPANY
Building international consensus
Between the Vienna Convention in 1985 and the meeting in Montreal in 1987, three key factors evolved, leading to international agreement on a CFC protocol. The first factor was the growing scientific understanding of the stratospheric ozone depletion problem. Improvements in the collection and assessment of data and in the development of atmospheric models led to a stronger scientific base on which to argue for and develop control strategies. Reports issued jointly by WMO/NASA and EPA/UNEP in 1986 were particularly important because they demonstrated a strong consensus among scientists and policymakers that the ozone depletion problem was real, that it was global in scope, and that society would have to deal with its effects for perhaps centuries to come.
The second factor was the increasing public and political concern for the problem. This concern was based on the threat of increased skin cancer and the perception of potential global catastrophe associated with the 1985 discovery of the hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic. In particular, the ozone hole, as a symbol of the potential impacts of ozone depletion, galvanized world opinion.
This satellite photo shows the ozone hole centered over the South Pole in 1989; ozone depletion was greater around the periphery of the pole in 1988
The third factor was the availability of economical CFC substitutes that would not deplete stratospheric ozone. Industry perceived that an international protocol was a necessary mechanism for providing economic incentives to further develop and market CFC substitutes that it had begun developing in the 1970s. In 1986, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, the world's largest producer of CFCs, announced that suitable alternatives could be available within five years given the right market conditions, and industry representatives endorsed a position favoring a reasonable global limit on the growth of CFC production capacity.
The case of global warming
Agreement on the Montreal Protocol was achieved because there was scientific consensus, public and political interest, and the support of major negotiators. With respect to the global warming issue, however, less agreement exists. Certainly there is scientific consensus that the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases has been increasing and that the greenhouse effect is real. However, scientists do not agree on the rate of onset and the potential magnitude of the problem. Nor do they agree on greenhouse impacts, particularly at the regional level.
In the case of ozone depletion, a concerted international effort was made to build a strong scientific base on which to formulate policy. All of the uncertainties concerning ozone depletion were not resolved when the Montreal Protocol was signed; however, at that time scientific consensus did exist on the potential magnitude of the problem and on potential health and environmental risks. Building such a scientific assessment concerning global warming is just beginning.
Although public and political interest in global warming is considerable—particularly as a result of the North American drought in 1988 and the attention that the greenhouse issue has been receiving in the popular media—it is not as focused as it was and still is for the ozone depletion issue. This is because the potential impacts of global warming are more uncertain, less tangible, and less immediate than those associated with ozone depletion. Nations, industries, and national and international agencies and organizations disagree on what, if anything, to do about global warming.
There are other ways in which the two issues differ. First, ozone depletion is and will be more manageable than dealing with global warming—a considerably more complicated problem. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions, a major contributor to global warming, will require regulating fossil fuel use, which is central to all economic activities from the local to the global level.
Second, the perception that there may be winners and losers among countries was not an important issue with regard to ozone depletion in the way that it is with respect to global warming. Some countries perceive themselves as potentially benefiting from the changing climatic conditions associated with global warming. Thus assessments of costs and benefits will be a central factor in how individual countries respond in any negotiations on global warming.
And last, the developing countries may be less amenable to measures that slow global warming than they have been to cutting CFC use. It will be much more difficult to gain their approval of an international agreement on global warming as they have a much greater stake in the use of fossil fuels than in CFCs.
Lessons for future negotiations
What lessons does the Montreal Protocol offer for formulating international responses to global warming? Certainly the experience of negotiating and implementing the Montreal Protocol has better prepared us for dealing with global warming and other global environmental problems. In general, the negotiation of the Montreal Protocol demonstrates the necessity of building on past decisions and compromises—such agreements do not happen overnight. Similarly, the international community will have to construct a framework of decisions and actions to serve as a foundation for substantive international agreements on global warming.
In particular, the negotiation of the Protocol evinces the need to develop a decision-making environment that is conducive to resolving complicated scientific, economic, and political issues that are often barriers to international agreement on global environmental problems. In such an environment, the goals of nations can be integrated with those of the scientific, industrial, and environmental communities. Any international agreements concerning global warming will depend on an integration of these goals.
In addition, the Montreal Protocol suggests the usefulness of formulating very focused agreements. It may be difficult to achieve a broad "law of the atmosphere" in the next ten years, but it may be possible to formulate more specific multilateral and international agreements on global warming research and monitoring, energy efficiency, technology transfers, or deforestation that could provide the foundation on which to build a broader agreement.
Dealing with global warming presents the international community with an even more difficult task than combating ozone depletion. The scientific, political, and economic uncertainties are greater, and the stakes are higher. While the Montreal Protocol is not an exact model for addressing the global warming issue, it does provide insights on a process for negotiating solutions to global environmental problems.
Peter M. Morrisette is a fellow in the Climate Resources Program at RFF. This article is adapted from an article that will appear in an upcoming publication of the Policy Studies Organization.
A version of this article appeared in print in the May 1990 issue of Resources magazine.
