An Alternative Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations •

DeborahAn Alternative S. Davenport Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations An Alternative Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations • Deborah S. Davenport* Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 In 1990, the United States proposed the negotiation of a global convention to stop deforestation. Negotiations toward a global forest convention (GFC) began under the auspices of the United Nations during preparations for the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), but faltered as this issue became enmeshed in North-South politics. Ultimately, the US-led coali- tion achieved only a non-binding agreement at UNCED: the “Non-legally Bind- ing Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on the Man- agement, Conservation, and Sustainable Development of All Types of Forests” (the Forest Principles). A push to include language in that agreement on revisit- ing the issue of a global convention later was also repelled. Since then, calls have continued for negotiation of a binding global forest convention; to date, anti-convention forces have prevailed. In this paper I analyze the failure of global concern about forests to result in an effective, legally binding international agreement on action to protect them in 1992. I focus here on a legally binding commitment, as opposed to the more common focus on the concept of a “forest regime,” in order to bypass the ongoing controversy among scholars as to whether a global forest regime cur- rently exists in the absence of a legally binding agreement covering this issue area. Given that the current international structure on forests is generally re- garded as ineffective in curbing deforestation,1 the question of interest to me is why, in the early 1990s, when interest in global environmental treaties and international concern about deforestation were both at a peak, the US as leader of the international system was unable to bring together countries to agree to an effective binding treaty for forest protection and conservation. * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Montreal, Quebec, March 17-20, 2004. It has greatly beneªted from com- ments by Walter Mattli, Suzanne Werner, Rayman Mohamed, Amanda E. Wooden, Ian Symons, Elisabeth Corell, David Humphreys, Lars Gulbrandsen, and participants at the Nordic Forest Researchers Workshop in Stockholm, Sweden, September 16-17, 2004. 1. See, for example, United Nations Forum on Forests 2004; and Earth Negotiations Bulletin, 17 May 2004, 11. Global Environmental Politics 5:1, February 2005 © 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 105 106 • An Alternative Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations While it has been argued that binding (“hard”) international law in the form of weak framework conventions differs little from “soft” law in the form of declarations or statements of principles,2 I mark two critical differences. First, while legal conventions may be as vague in their obligations as soft hortatory declarations, amounting to no more than what states would have done even in their absence, binding commitments can be followed by protocols which are in- tended to set out speciªc obligations. Second, only legally binding commitments, no matter how weak, can have mechanisms to enforce compliance. Al- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 though binding agreements can differ in their effectiveness, the effectiveness of binding agreements may be judged in terms of the depth of commitments made, the existence of timelines for achieving performance or environmental targets, the extent of mechanisms for monitoring and enforcing compliance, and the extent of participation of key actors necessary to achieve effective coop- eration in a speciªc issue area.3 Several analysts have grappled with the question of why no binding agreement on forests was produced in 1992. Lipschutz, for instance, claims that in large part this could be due to the fact that forests are different from other por- tions of the natural environment whose role is directly related to international commerce and can therefore be addressed through instruments that regulate trade.4 This explanation, however, ignores the existence of binding agreements such as the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Dimitrov, on the other hand, identiªes a lack of informa- tion on possible transboundary consequences of forest degradation, particularly with respect to the effects of deforestation on climate change and biodiversity, as key to the failure of the forest negotiations in 1992 and the continuing lack of effectiveness in global forest policy-making.5 This argument is limited in that Dimitrov does not actually ascribe causality to this factor. It is consistent, however, with my argument below that costs and beneªts matter; the more impor- tant question, though, is whose overall costs and beneªts matter most. Beyond the arguments of Lipschutz and Dimitrov, the prevailing argument as to the reason for the failure to achieve a GFC in 1992 was that Malaysia and other developing countries were so single-minded about preserving sovereignty over their natural resources that this precluded agreement on any convention.6 This explanation begs the question of why, if the US is the dominant power in the international system, it did not have the power to overcome such an objec- tion. Making use of game theoretic modeling and counterfactual testing, I offer an alternative explanation which attributes the outcome not to a lack of power on the part of the US but to a lack of American willingness to lead the negotiations, even though the US was the architect of the original proposal at the state level. This lack of willingness was directly related to US economic interests. 2. Guppy 1996. 3. See, for example, the 1987 Montreal Protocol. 4. Lipschutz 2000/2001. 5. Dimitrov 2003. 6. See, for example, Humphreys 1993, 1996; and Porter and Brown 1996. Deborah S. Davenport • 107 An Asymmetric Deadlock over Forests Deforestation, particularly tropical deforestation, was put on the international political agenda in the mid-1980s, due to concern over threats to the environmental services forests perform. The rate of tropical deforestation climbed from a rate of 11 million hectares to 17 million hectares per year during the 1980s, an increase of over 50%.7 Calls for some kind of global forest instrument came from numerous state and nonstate actors in the North, the US being the ªrst Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 state actor to propose a stand-alone forest convention. Many advocates, such as the US and the FAO, emphasized forests’ global values such as their role as carbon sinks and their unique biodiversity, especially in the tropics. These global values, as well as the global aesthetic and existence values of the great forests of the world, had ªrst caused the wave of public outcry against tropical deforestation and fostered a conceptualization of forests as the “common heritage of mankind,”8 to acknowledge the value placed on forests by people who receive no other beneªt from forests. For good or ill, this conceptualization of forests implied that people in the North were entitled to some of the values inherent in forests in the South and thus should have some say in their use. The South met the North’s calls for a forest instrument with the argument that forests were a local, national and developmental issue; as such, they should be exploited in line with national policy.9 Led by Malaysia, the world’s largest producer of tropical timber—as well as the country singled out by NGOs as the worst offender in the destruction of tropical forests, and the state that was most concerned about the threat a convention posed to its sovereign right to exploit its forests, particularly for international trade10—the G-77 asserted that the North’s advocacy for a forest instrument was a “message [by developed countries] that developing countries did not know how to manage their forest resources and therefore they would have to take the lead.”11 Malaysian Ambassa- dor Razali Ismail accused developed countries of “imped[ing] the full utilization of our resources and put[ting] them at the disposition of the transna- tionals.”12 Assertions of this type form the backbone of the school of thought that stresses the primacy of sovereignty and national interest in the failure of the forest negotiations. Humphreys, for instance, labels the polarization of the international community the “national resource-global heritage divide.”13 Porter and Brown call the desire to avoid any restrictions on exploitation of national forest 7. US Government, An International Convention on the World’s Forests, draft of 7/5/90. This statement was based on FAO assessments of the world’s tropical forests from 1980 and 1990. 8. Porter and Brown 1996, 126. 9. Earth Summit Times, 9 June, 1992, 15; and Earth Summit Times, 13 June, 1992, 9. 10. Taib 1997, 45. Fauziah Mohd Taib served on Malaysia’s delegation to the UNCED-related negotiations. 11. Taib 1997, 79. 12. Terra Viva, 14 June, 1992, 11. 13. Humphreys 1993, 47. 108 • An Alternative Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations resources the top priority of timber-exporting countries such as Malaysia and In- donesia, and argue that it prevented the South from using their forests as lever- age to win concessions from the North because they were unable to make concessions to Northern concerns on forests in return.14 One US ofªcial agrees now with Malaysia’s statements at the time, taking the position that the sovereignty issue led to the failure of the forest negotiations: Forests are not naturally globalized, no matter how much you want to talk Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 about them in the global context.

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