International Relations and the Environment

An article in the New York Times reported that last week India’s new environmental minister said the country would not participate in plans to cut emissions before a climate summit next year. This brings to light the issue we discussed in class of whether countries like India and China should be considered developed or developing countries.

Prakash Javadekar, the minister, brought up an argument that we discussed in class. He claims that developed countries such as the United States brought on these high emissions; therefore, it is their responsibility to participate in plans that will cut greenhouse gas emissions. However, I think this argument goes along with the old saying that two wrongs don’t make a right. While the U.S. may have been a major contributor to emissions in the past, that should not give countries like India the right to ignore environmental issues.  Following in the same path as countries like the United States will only lead to more failures in environmental policies.

One of the biggest issues when it comes to global environmental politics is being reactive versus proactive. If India continues to wait to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, it might be too late. The article also mentions that India’s emissions are estimated to double as the country is working to provide electricity to more than 300 million people.  While it makes sense that they may be weary to commit to lowering emissions when the amount of people using electricity is on the rise, they should still be implementing some sort of plan on how they are going to control the rise.  If India is already aware that more people are going to use electricity I do not see why they would not be able to be proactive. Instead they are using other country’s such as the United States past mistakes to justify the ones they are about to make.

China is usually compared to India in situations like these, however according to the article China has shown more interest in implementing more environmental policy along with the United States. Nonetheless, without the compliance of India it will be hard for change to occur. This brings up the issue of international relations as a whole. From a realists’ standpoint, India is only going to look out for what is in its best interest instead of the environment as a whole. 

The article in the Times brings up the argument that the minister makes that India has more pertinent things to worry about than cutting down on its greenhouse gases. Javadekar said India’s first priority would be to eradicate poverty and worry about the country’s economy.  So, in this case when it comes to cutting emissions India would definitely be considered a dragger. Because of the anarchic tendencies of states, it is only natural that India would consider the environment to be secondary to the economy. Nonetheless, I do not see why the two cannot be used together to create solutions.

As we discussed the WTO readings I realized how closely the economy and the environment are connected. Even though this article has nothing to do with trade, it shows how many people such as the leaders of India think a strong economy is needed before they can work on environmental policy. But, I think the two can go hand and hand. Strengthening the economy could mean investing in technology that cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions. Not only would that technology be helpful to India, but also other countries could buy the technology from India to improve their own environmental policies.

Additionally, India is trying to make change in its own way. The minister said they are trying to increase public transportation to decrease the demands for cars. While policies such as these may not be as helpful as working with other countries such as the United States and China, it is a step in the right direction.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/world/asia/25climate.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar&_r=0

Blog Post 1: Global South vs. Global North Environmental Responsibilities

In class we talked about many different ideas on how government can handle environmental policies. Among these being emission charges, emission standards, command and control regulation, permits systems and more. We also discussed the reoccurring issue of if developing countries should have to bear the same amount of burden in decreasing pollution as developed countries. However, we never explicitly argued about the morals behind this dilemma. In this blog I will argue that Global South countries should not have to bear the same responsibility as Global North countries until they reach the point of becoming developed.

To put this issue in perspective, let us realize where the problem behind environmental policies begins. To start with, the main players to be seemingly influencing global environmental policies are the leaders of each nation. It is easy to blame these individuals for not enacting proper policies, but is it actually their fault? These leaders are for the most part being elected by the citizens of their nation or by a governing body. Because of this we can infer that their primary goal is getting themselves into these positions of power and then retaining their power. Therefore they will be fairly responsive to what their constituents want from them.

The issue is that most citizens don’t make improving the environment a priority. I myself can admit to this. Sometimes I don’t recycle that one water bottle I had in my backpack and sometimes I choose to drive my car even though the food place I’m going to is a 10 minute walk away. While these individual occurrences are not solely responsible for the pollution we have in this world, the mentality behind them is crucial for understanding why we have seemingly irreconcilable environmental issues.

It all stems from the fact that yeah, environmental issues are bad, but it’s not as bad as other things. Most Americans have their own day-to-day worries that take priority over some facts that a scientist across the country released. As humans, we react to things we can physically see for ourselves and consider these our “immediate” problems. Since we don’t necessarily see the environmental degradation and because it is happening on a relatively slow scale compared to our daily lives, we are not fully realizing its eventual impact.

This is why other things, such as economic growth and development, normally have a stronger influence over policy. Additionally, this is a main reason why there is so much conflict about coming to an agreement on environmental policy. However this is especially true in developing countries where their standard of living is much lower compared to the United States and other developed countries. In these countries citizens may have a difficult time finding life essentials such as food, water, clothing and shelter. Because of this having them give up, for example, the same levels of CO2 emissions is simply unfair.

While maybe adopting environmentally friendly habits is inconvenient and even annoying to some citizens of developed countries, it is much more humane than expecting developing countries, where many live in poverty, to further give up technology that could significantly increase their standard of living. This ideology is often referred to as “Greenhouse Development Rights”. On their website the organization states that its “framework is designed to support a global emergency climate mobilization while, at the same time, preserving the rights of all people to reach a dignified level of sustainable human development free of the privations of poverty”.

However one issue with this idea is that often times states do not care about the wellbeing of other states. In other words, why should one state give up something so another state can be better off, even though they are still worse off in the first place? Besides morals, which often do not go hand-in-hand with politics, there are not many other reasons. Perhaps a need for a more developed, technologically innovated world, which could allow for more effective trade of goods and ideas. However this does seem like a far-stretched idea that is hard to predict. Therefore, I do not know if I see this idea as likely to happen, only that it is my belief that it should.

Another issue, as we discussed in class, is that it is hard to determine what is developing and what is developed. For example, China claims to be developing even though they have the second biggest economy in the world, but they also still have very high poverty rates. So how do we distinguish between these two categories? This is something that needs to be determined in an international agreement in order to make it fair for all parties. Again this may be difficult and infeasible, as it seems most things are with environmental policy.

Sources:

Greenhouse Development Rights <http://gdrights.org/>

Whaling, Ethics, and NGO's

Whaling, Ethics, and NGO’s

            Why do whales, dolphins, manatees and other marine mammals deserve special rights and protection from harvesting? The truth is they probably don’t. To attribute special rights to a specific type of creature based solely upon its psychological and physiological characteristics such as intelligence and cuteness is arbitrary. I will clarify that the case is different when rights and protections are given to a species due to threat of extinction (although existence value is also debatable), however there is no reason people shouldn’t harvest and consume certain species of marine mammals if their populations can support it. In this blog I will explore some of the ethical aspects of the whaling controversy between Japan and the United States and the role that NGO’s should take in it.

             

             How do we decide what is right and wrong to harvest for consumption? Human beings are usually the first thing marked off the list as most people consider cannibalism to be deplorable. A close second or debatable first are things that will kill you. Next are disgusting and gross things, I will spare you the details. But after that short list the field is open to a myriad variety of personal tastes and values, none of which are right or wrong because they are a representation of a preference or personal belief that is only binding upon those who personally hold it. For example the Japanese like killing and eating whales because they see them as food but citizens of the United States don’t like killing and eating whales because they find them aesthetically pleasing or believe that they are too smart to warrant killing. Neither of these parties’ beliefs are binding on the other party. This means no matter how much U.S. citizens deplore the killing and eating of whales by the Japanese, the Japanese will still enjoy killing and eating whales. It should come as no surprise then that the Japanese continue to kill and eat whales despite the complaints of the U.S. and NGO’s. Thus the nature of ethics comes to the surface, ethics are codes of conduct that are binding only to the members of the group that share them. Even codes that declare certain actions to be innately wrong due to their nature are still essentially contracts between people and prone to adjustment as circumstances change. This is significant in the case of whaling because ethical claims that whaling are wrong have not and are not likely stop the Japanese from whaling because they don’t share the same ethical beliefs as U.S. citizens. Thus, the role of ethics in the case of whaling is merely to compound the problem by causing conflict between interested parties and reducing the viability of cooperation. The Sea Shepherd video we viewed in class is a great example of how people with strong ethical beliefs can cause far more harm than good, regardless of intentions.

            

                NGO’s have roles to play in dealing with environmental problems. They provide information, expertise, and political and social pressure for change. In the case of whaling a perfect example of how an NGO should not act is the Sea Shepherd video. NGO’s should not resort to shady tactics such as illegal boarding of Japanese whaling vessels and then subsequently lying to the media about it to try to put national pressure on the Japanese. All doing so does is create more hostility between the interested parties and generate better ratings for the show. A better approach would be to gather information on which whales were harvested, how they were used, who used them, the beliefs of the people who used them, and other useful bits of information that can be used to make a values judgment and informed decision. As a thought experiment do you deplore the taking of non-endangered whale species by indigenous people who have hunted whales for generations and it is an integral part of their cultural identity? What about if it was done by a U.S. citizen just for sport and no part of the whale was used? Is your answer different and why? Once the facts are gathered and circulated the NGO should try to influence the interested parties in order to achieve the desired result. In the case of whaling the desired result is dependent upon the information gathered and the values that stem from them. Perhaps the NGO could create a website that allowed Japanese whale consumers to communicate with U.S. whale lovers. This would allow for monitored and recorded communications between interested parties and a general proliferation of possible forms of cooperation and compromise (it is certainly more productive than throwing a bottle at a boat). To clarify, when I say monitor I mean for abuses of the site such as open hostility towards other users and other general code of conduct issues associated with online communications. In conclusion it is possible that Japanese whaling is perfectly sustainable and that the only reason for conflict is a difference in values which can only be mitigated through effective communication.

           

Blog Post 1: NGOs Working Outside of the System

Jon Burnsky           

            NGOs have been playing larger and larger roles in leading to the solving of and awareness of international issues in the recent past. This is especially true in the case of international environmental problems with NGOs such as the WWF and Greenpeace being great examples of this success. However, one dividing question looms over these organizations: whether it is better to work with and inside the existing worldwide governmental structures or outside with the people. News reports, the class lectures, and the readings have proven that working on the outside is the better option and will yield more substantial long-lasting results.

            Time and time again, when governments from different nations convene at a summit to deal with environmental issues by writing up a new treaty they leave empty handed or with an agreement nobody will end up following. Only a few exceptions, where this type of action has worked, such as the Montreal protocol, exist. These fail because powerful and wealthy countries usually have very different interests than less developed countries, even when the problem, such as global warming, is bad for of them.

States can be pushers, draggers, intermediates, and bystanders, all according to their complicated cost-benefit analyses. However, businesses have a much simpler analysis to do: will they make or lose money? The growing global market has given each person on the planet more power to buy and sell whatever it is they please. NGOs, through information and symbolic politics, can change what will be bought in the market.

For example, Greenpeace shed light on the fact that leather being used by Nike was from cattle grazing on deforested Amazon forestland. After calling them out, Nike changed their policy, as did many other shoe companies following in their footsteps. This bypassed the system in place and made change happen. By affecting the consumers’ perception of a company, Greenpeace decreased demand for a harmful product and therefore directly aided the situation. This has been done by NGOs in areas such as lowering consumer oil consumption and greenhouse gases as well by promoting the use of energy efficient cars and appliances.

The whaling lecture and video of the Sea Shepherds tells a similar story. For a good amount of time, NGOs were able to make the people of multiple nations aware of the rampant inhumane and excessive whaling going on in the seas. Even if the methods used were leaning towards propaganda and publicity stunts as seen in the “Whale Wars” episode, they seemed to catch the public’s eye. This awareness spread and festered into action and even attempted legislation. International laws worked for a while, but fell short of fixing the problem in the end because of countries refusing to let go of their profitable industries. However, changing the consumer’s view towards purchasing whale products and making the whaling industries lose money would result in decreased whaling.

Paul Wapner writes that democratic and capitalist societies are the perfect tool for NGOs. With a great majority of the developed world, and most countries overall, being democracies of some kind, activism can heavily influence global policies. NGOs can work with the people of their home country or go abroad to relay information to other states. They essentially embody international cooperation. Wrapner writes, “…activist organizations are not simply transnational pressuregroups, but rather are political actors in their own right” (Wrapner 312). NGOs have practically just as much power to shape industry and public opinion as actual governments in the activist based democracies and economies of today.

International regimes only work when the design is acceptable to all of the major players and there is no incentive to cheat or lie about resolve. Writing up a treaty or protocol that fits these criteria is extremely difficult, as past attempts have shown. States will not give up their interests and industries for another’s without asking for compensation, which other states are reluctant to give. Bypassing the bureaucracies in place, NGOs have the unique capability to change interests at the individual level and therefore industrial and national levels. NGOs working outside of the government are the best bet for getting international environmental cooperation a part of the future.

Sources:

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/news/nike-establishes-policy-072209/

Wrapner, Paul. “Politics Beyond the State: Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics.”