International Equity and Global Environmental Politics:

Power and Principles in U.S. Foreign Policy

(Ashgate, 2001)

 

Paul G.  Harris

 

Abstract

 

In this book, I argue that the U.S. government, particularly under President Bill Clinton, came to regard international environmental equity, defined as a fair and just distribution of the benefits, burdens, and decision making authority associated with international environmental relations, as an important feature of its foreign policy. I also acknowledge that U.S. efforts to implement this policy were quite limited. Indeed, while equity has become an important feature of global environmental politics, most of the economically developed countries have done too little to act on it. I wanted to explain this limited acceptance of equity in global environmental politics generally, and in U.S. foreign policy in particular. I wanted to know why the United States started to move in the "right" direction, and I wanted to understand why it did not do more to promote equity in international environmental policy making. Hence this book.

　

Questions about international environmental equity are more than academic. Serious efforts to bring equity into global environmental politics can lead to policies and practices that help protect the natural environment on which all countries and all people depend. Additionally, because it must be manifested by more aid to the world's poor countries, more serious consideration of equity in global environmental politics is likely to lead to less poverty and suffering on a potentially grand scale. By acting to promote international environmental equity, the United States and other developed countries can promote their national interests and the interests of people in the developing world. This would be a very good thing.

　

Some readers may misinterpret what follows as a strong assertion that the United States has embraced international equity and followed through with commendable steps toward its implementation. That is not what I want to say. Looking at last year's sixth conference of the parties (COP-6) of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), in which the United States grappled with European and many developing countries over how it would meet its obligations under the FCCC's Kyoto Protocol, one can find plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize the United States. It failed to agree to concrete measures designed to limit its greenhouse gas emissions, despite its vastly disproportionate share of them. In short, it failed to lead by example. Nevertheless, I wish to argue that international equity is now an important consideration and component in U.S. foreign policy, in large part because of global environmental changes. Indeed, COP-6 showed this to be the case; discussions of how to implement international environmental equity were perhaps the most distinctive feature of that conference. The United States argued about how it would implement provisions of the Kyoto Protocol, not whether it would do so.

　

This is a frequently overlooked shift in U.S. policy, and an essential precursor to the much more robust actions the United States must take if it is to lead the world in protecting the global environment. Sometimes international environmental equity makes it to the front burner of U.S. foreign policy, but most of the time it will of course be viewed as less important than other issues, notably issues like trade and military threats to U.S. interests and allies. However, this may change as environmental conditions grow worse. I think that in the decades to come international environmental equity will become much more prominent in global environmental politics and U.S. foreign policy.

　

        This book contains three parts. In the first part, I introduce the concept of international environmental equity, try to define its meanings, and show how it has started to permeate global environmental politics and U.S. foreign policy. The second part is devoted to understanding and explaining international environmental equity in U.S. foreign policy. Eschewing simple explanations, I argue that the U.S. response to the emerging international consensus on environmental equity has been belated and imperfect, resulting from (1) concerns about the impact of environmental changes on U.S. national interests, (2) the complexity of America's pluralistic policy-making process, and (3) the subtle—but sometimes important—influence of the principle of international equity per se. In the final part of the book I discuss the implications for the United States and the world of embracing—or failing to embrace—international equity as a core objective of global environmental policy.

　

        American leadership  on international environmental equity is by no means certain, and recent events suggest that it may remain elusive. As this book goes to press, the new administration of George W. Bush is consolidating its power in Washington. In one of his first and more controversial acts, the new president reversed his campaign pledge to place new controls on U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, and he parroted climate skeptics who question the dangers posed by global warming. By all indications, the same forces shaping his father's policies on climate change were at work. The message of the president's "flip-flop" is one of the themes permeating this book: Political pluralism makes it extraordinarily difficult for the United States to take on its responsibilities in combating climate change and other environmental problems. The forces resisting U.S. environmental leadership are truly monumental, and the new administration is clearly very sensitive to them. Nevertheless, the new Bush administration may find it difficult to backtrack too far, and if it does so other countries may surprise us by finding the political will to act without the United States. Over time, this may stimulate a more equitable response from the United States.