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 coalition 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.

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 intended 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 cooperation 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 information 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 important 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 objection. 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 leverage 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. Forests are tangible, local, you know where they are, often who they belong to; they don’t move around except in international trade. And the most global aspects of forests are biodiversity [which was already being addressed in the negotiations for a biodiversity convention], the carbon sequestration values [already being addressed in negotiations on climate change], or trade [addressed within the WTO, the ITTA, and other international trade agreements]. What’s left after that is not global.15 There thus existed an asymmetric deadlock at the beginning of negotiations for a GFC, a situation that can be modeled as a two-party game in which one party has no interest in an agreement (see Figure 1). This reºects the North-South coalitional politics between developed and developing countries, whose boundaries in this case were virtually drawn in concrete. An asymmetric deadlock differs dramatically from the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game model that has been most frequently used to model environmental issues, in that PD at least implicitly assumes some common interest on the part of both sides in an environmental negotiation through modeling a cooperative outcome recognizably higher for each player (3,3) than a noncooperative (2,2) outcome (see Figure 2). Because of the assumption that there is at least some common interest in provision of a collective environmental good, there has been little acknowledgement of the possibility of initial asymmetric deadlock. However, a common interest in global environmental goods, particularly goods that will only manifest themselves in the future, may well be lacking, given their characteristics of intangibility and uncertainty, the unevenness of distribution of prospective beneªts and costs of cooperative action, and the different meanings environmental goods carry for different people.

Bargaining Power and Leadership Despite the asymmetric deadlock manifested in this case, I argue that it was not Malaysia’s vociferous leadership of the G-77 on the issue of sovereignty that best explains the failure on forests in 1992. Even given no assumption of common interest, in a situation of asymmetric deadlock the deadlock can be overcome if the side preferring agreement is able to change the anti-agreement side’s percep-

14. Porter and Brown 1996, 117. 15. US agency ofªcial, August 2001. Deborah S. Davenport • 109

Figure 1 Asymmetric Deadlock Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021

Figure 2 Prisoner’s Dilemma

tion of the value of the agreement outcome relative to the no-agreement outcome. This argument is based on the negotiation analysis approach of Sebenius and others and on Knight’s power-based theory of institution building in the context of conºicting interests.16 A necessary condition for a party’s agreement is the prospect that the agreement will have greater perceived net worth than that party’s best course of action without agreement. Where this condition is not met, another party

16. See, for example, Sebenius 1991a, 1991b, 1992a, 1992b; Raiffa 1982; Lax and Sebenius 1986; and Knight 1992. See also Krasner’s third deªnition of bargaining power as the ability to change the values within the game’s payoff matrix (1991, 340). 110 • An Alternative Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations which places positive value on agreement may be able to manipulate the preferences of the anti party toward the agreement outcome, either through enhanc- ing the potential value of agreement or making the anti party’s alternative to agreement worse. Manipulation of the perceptions and preferences of one side by the other side is most likely to be associated with issue linkage—incentives, such as promises of rewards, or threats of punishment. Bargaining power depends on the extent of the resources available for use to bring about changes that cause preferred outcomes,17 such as resources that Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 permit a party to punish or reward another party for its behavior. Thus, in an asymmetric deadlock situation, manipulation of preferences for effective agreement depends on the relative bargaining power of the party favoring agreement, in terms of the resources that can be used to change perceptions, as opposed to the bargaining power of the other party to resist such pressure and either change the deal or walk away. Power asymmetry affects preference manipulation. Lax and Sebenius acknowledge that “greater resources may translate into greater capacity to impose sanctions.”18 The structure of the international system precedes the process of any international negotiations in determining outcomes. What may be true for a negotiation among actors roughly equal in power—at least in the sense of all having the power to walk away from agreement—cannot be assumed to hold true for actors with wide disparities of power resources. In a situation of great power asymmetry, movement from an asymmetric deadlock to effective agreement through manipulation of perceptions of the zone of agreement can occur, but this requires that the actor or side with the asymmetrical share of power resources, or capacity, also have the will to coerce agreement.

An Economic Theory of Leadership I operationalize capability and will to provide leadership in negotiations as follows: Capability: The greater the capability of the pro side, the more effective the agreement can be. In the multilateral context of a global power asymmetry, this translates into a requirement for the most powerful state in the system to be a member of any pro-agreement coalition in order for effective agreement to be achieved through manipulation. First, if the state with the most capability is in the pro coalition this opens the possibility of using some of its resources to meet any costs of coercion. On the other hand, if the state with most capability is not in the pro coalition, not only are its resources not available for such use but manipulation of that state’s preferences then also becomes an issue for the pro coalition; this poses an additional cost on top of the fact that the pro coalition already has fewer resources to use for such linkage.

17. W. M. Habeeb, Power and Tactics in International Negotiation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988; quoted in Zartman 1991, 68. 18. Lax and Sebenius 1986, 253. Deborah S. Davenport • 111

This may be exacerbated by differences in perceptions of absolute dollar amounts. What is perceived as inexpensive for some may be exorbitantly expensive for others, depending on states’ attributes. However, differences between states in terms of their level of “economic vulnerability”—in other words, de- pendence on imports or on external markets for domestic products19—or in their levels of capabilities more generally may inºuence their perceptions of the absolute dollar amount of the costs and beneªts of agreement and particularly

of issue linkage, with the effect of favoring the interests of the less vulnerable Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 state. Thus, not only are countries with fewer capabilities probably more vulnerable to manipulation of their perceptions of costs and beneªts, particularly economic threats, than is the economically dominant state, they would also feel the costs of attempting to coerce cooperation more than the economically dominant country would feel the cost or beneªt resulting from any attempted manipulation through sanctions or incentives. I take the US as the most powerful actor of the international system, following the ideas of numerous other authors.20 DeSombre focuses on US leadership in the international environmental policy arena, not only because of the US’ economic size and inºuence but also because the US has some of the most stringent environmental regulations in the world.21 Several other authors have also argued that the US is critical to an effective outcome in global environmental issue areas.22 Finally, a focus on the US as a necessary member of the pro coalition is justiªed by the fact that the US is likely to bear a far greater propor- tion—in absolute terms—of the cost of any measures required for manipulating effective agreement than any other single state. This conception of leadership is not to be confused with hegemonic stability theory, however. Hegemonic stability theory assumes that the good to be provided is a public good,23 which environmental collective goods are not,24 and that, of power and willingness, power is the factor that varies. As Snidal points out, “the US retains more than sufªcient resources to achieve its goals”; what varies is not its capabilities but its “quality of leadership.”25 I therefore take it to be necessary that the US be a member of the pro- agreement coalition for an effective environmental agreement to be achieved. Will: The willingness of the US to lead negotiations to an effective agreement depends on its explicit or implicit perception of the costs of agreement versus the beneªts to be obtained from agreement. Although both will and capability are affected by the costs of action, they differ in that will not only depends on having enough resources to undertake an action but also on deriving a

19. DeSombre 2000, 161. 20. See, for example, Underdal 1994; Snidal 1990; Panjabi 1997; and Paterson 1992. 21. DeSombre 2000; see also Mathews 1991; Gjerde 1996; and Taib 1997. 22. See, for example, Haas 1992b; and Benedick 1998. 23. Snidal 1985. 24. Hardin 1992. 25. Snidal 1990, 346. 112 • An Alternative Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations beneªt from the action that is greater than its cost. The assumption that decision-makers attempt to assess the costs and beneªts of different policy alternatives is well accepted in the literature.26 At the initial stage, there are as many as three possible economic beneªts and three types of cost that an effective agreement might be expected to bring (see Figure 3): First, there is the desired environmental beneªt that gives rise to the negotiations to begin with. This beneªt is actually the avoidance of environmental damage as a result of the policy action.27 The value of this type of beneªt increases with a deteriorating status quo Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 as this progressively increases the costs of a “no action” outcome. There may also be a potential economic beneªt from the avoidance of costs associated with the loss of market competitiveness in situations in which domestic US actors are held to higher standards in an environmental issue area than are actors in other countries. This type of cost is consistent with DeSombre’s theory of domestic sources of international policy,28 except that here I explicitly posit that the state of origin of the domestic policy in question matters a great deal. In this case, the fact that there were US laws on the books which held US timber producers to high standards compared to the rest of the world prompted the US to propose international standards. A third type of beneªt from agreement that may be found in some cases is a positive, particularistic beneªt, as opposed to simply the avoidance of costs, such as the greater proªts that may be generated from the discovery and production of substitutes for regulated substances. In such “Stiglerian” situations, according to Oye and Maxwell, environmental regulations “confer rents upon the few while simultaneously advancing general interests in the management of environmental problems.”29 Oye and Maxwell identify the ozone case as an example of a Stiglerian situation, because producers of CFC substitutes beneªted from regulations that mandated product substitution. This is limited by the fact that the industry that beneªts from the creation of substitutes will not necessar- ily be the industry that incurs most loss from regulation of the substances that the substitutes are intended to replace. For example, there is little overlap between the fossil fuel industry and the alternative energy industry in the US (although it may be noted that in Europe British Petroleum has moved recently to position itself in the alternative energy market while continuing to be a leading actor in the fossil fuel industry). In such a case, where industrial winners and losers from proposed international regulation are in direct conºict with each other, the discrepancy between them is accommodated in the typology presented here if the position of the US in the negotiations coincides with the economic interests of the industry that of the two has the greater effect on the US economy.

26. See, for example, Cairncross 1992; Sprinz and Vaahtoranta 1994; Rowlands 1995; and Porter, Brown and Chasek 2000; see also Most and Starr 1989. 27. Dudek and Oppenheimer 1986, 362. 28. DeSombre 2000. 29. Oye and Maxwell 1994, 594. Term based on Stigler 1971. Deborah S. Davenport • 113

Figure 3 Typology of Potential Costs and Beneªts of Environmental Agreement Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021

As for costs, in any effective environmental agreement there is a potential cost from halting activities banned or regulated by the agreement and those that depend on the regulated or banned activity or product. Secondly, if substitution is possible for any regulated activity or product, there is the cost of research, development and marketing of such substitutes. For example, the cost to the US of regulating carbon dioxide emissions would include the development of alternative sources of energy that do not produce such emissions, and the potentially higher cost of those substitutes to consumers, as well as any curtailment of economic activity in the country caused by reduced energy supplies if alternatives could not fully meet energy needs. The 1990 Economic Report of the President estimated the costs to the US of a 20% cut in carbon dioxide at between $800 billion and $3.6 trillion.30 Finally, there are the potential costs of manipulating preferences to bring other states into an agreement, given the preference of some states for the status quo. Manipulation can include either lowering the value of no agreement or raising the value of agreement for the anti side. Given an anti coalition for whom the net value of agreement is lower than the value of its no-agreement outcome, if the value of no agreement can be manipulated such that the value of no agreement for that party becomes lower than the value of agreement it will no longer have the will to walk away from agreement, and with that its in- sistence that its demands be met will also be greatly weakened. In effect, this means that if the pro-agreement side can use threats of punishment it can avoid the cost of incentives. Its motivation to do this will depend on the cost of potential punishment and the risk of actually having to take such action, compared to

30. Cited in Sebenius 1995, 53. 114 • An Alternative Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations the cost of providing incentives. This will be inºuenced by the credibility of the threat that can be made in any given international context. The cost of manipulation may be heavily inºuenced by what Sebenius has called “value-claiming issue linkage”—through which a state conditions its cooperation in a negotiation on concessions in other areas, such as ªnancial or technological transfers.31 One may assume that some costs of manipulation are built into initial calculations of the cost of agreement. For example, when the

US proposed a forest convention in 1990, a White House fact sheet acknowl- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 edged that the convention could “accelerate cooperative research in forest management practices” and “establish vehicles for formal and technical training in forestry practices, reforestation, and related subjects, for the provision of technical assistance...”andnoted both the “need for a review of bilateral and multilateral assistance programs to explore possible ways to promote sound forestry practices...”aswellasthepromise held by devices such as debt-for-nature swaps and local environmental trust fund programs.32 It may be surmised that the US expected ultimately to accede to more demands in that case. Yet value- claiming may push the prospective costs of manipulation up so much that the cost-beneªt equation for the US shifts, even in situations in which calculations otherwise favor an effective agreement. In a situation where credible threats of punishment do not exist, the value to the US of agreement relative to the costs it expects to incur in providing incentives will determine whether it will be willing to provide such incentives, or will instead attempt to obfuscate language on obligations while still striving for some agreement or indeed opt out of agreement altogether. For example, in the biodiversity case, developing country demands for concessions on intellectual property rights and transfer of biotechnology threatened the entire negotiation process and ultimately caused the US to refuse to sign the treaty when it was opened for signature. There are a number of difªculties in attempting to calculate the costs and beneªts of a GFC quantitatively. One difªculty lies in identifying and pricing environmental beneªts such as absorption of solar radiation, utilization of carbon dioxide, provision of habitat, puriªcation of rainwater, stabilization of soils, as well as the aesthetic and existence values of forests which are also felt on the global scale (Guppy 1996). Other difªculties include problems in identifying transfer payments (where a gain to one person is cancelled out by a loss to another) and in comparing long-term beneªts with short-term costs, given the convention of discounting the future and particularly in light of the prospect that some uses of environmental and natural resources such as forests may bring about negative long-term changes that are irreversible. However, it is possible to glean from the data the calculations, explicit or implicit, used by the US federal government in its considerations of the cost of action versus inaction—and the cost of agreement versus no agreement. We can assume at least implicit consideration of questions such as the following; the

31. For example, Sebenius 1992a, 1992b. 32. United States Talking Points 1990. Deborah S. Davenport • 115 answers to these questions can help to establish the parameters of an implicit cost-beneªt assessment in order to explain the level of US interest in effective agreement in a particular issue area:

• Does a proposal for agreement call for action on the part of the US (or US domestic actors)? If not, then the cost of the proposal is low for the US, in terms of the cost of developing substitutes or limiting economic activity.

• Does a proposal for agreement require action on the part of other coun- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 tries? If so, then the proposal holds the potential to contribute to the beneªt side of the equation for the US, in terms of improving the environment and/or raising standards in other countries which will have the effect of lowering market competition. • If the proposal requires action on the part of the US, does it also bring with it the promise of positive beneªts for the US, such as the creation of new markets or a competitive advantage in new technologies? If so, then these potential gains would contribute to the beneªt side of the cost- beneªt equation. • How much will it cost to coerce agreement by opposing countries? This cost will add to the cost side of the equation.

Did Anyone Win at Rio? In the end, a non-binding statement of Forest Principles, as called for by the anti coalition at the third preparatory committee (Prep Com) negotiation leading up to UNCED, was the most that could be achieved in Rio. However, the idea that an anti coalition led by Malaysia prevented a successful outcome for the US’ GFC proposal must be judged in light of US interests. I argue that the US’ interest in the convention that it had itself proposed was actually so shallow that it did not outweigh the costs of obtaining agreement. It is possible to look into the facts of this case and use counterfactual reasoning to judge whether the US actually “failed” in its quest for a convention or whether it did not even really try, due to its own conªguration of interests. It is true that at the end of UNCED, Malaysia’s Ambassador Ting pro- nounced the completed Forest Principles “a great victory for the developing nations, especially for Malaysia.”33 Many observers at UNCED faulted the South for obstructing agreement on forests and for not winning themselves more concessions. An American participant in the negotiations asserts that

at the time we were disappointed that agreement was not reached at Rio to subsequently negotiate a treaty on the basis of the Forest Principles. But this was not in the cards under any scenario, money or not. The G-77 was not go- ing to commit themselves at that time to negotiating a treaty later, end of story.”34

33. Jornal do Brasil, 13 June, 1992, 6. 34. US ofªcial, personal communication, August 2001. 116 • An Alternative Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations

Panjabi, likewise, criticizes the South’s emphasis on the sovereignty issue that “blinded the developing world to the very important concessions that the North was prepared to make in return for forest conservation by the South.”35 Sullivan similarly argues that “the South was simply not prepared to be told what to do with their forests even if they were offered compensation by the North.”36 However, during the course of the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) negotiations and UNCED itself, the G-77 made many statements that seemed to open the possibility for linking concessions on forests with other values that the Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 G-77 would be interested in claiming, such as ªnancial and technology transfers. This raises the question of whether the G-77 really won on sovereignty or in fact lost on its value-claiming demands to link forest protection to those values. The conclusion that the South prevented agreement must be assessed with caution, for three reasons. First, if Malaysia was the obstacle, that did not neces- sarily doom a forest convention; there was always a possibility of isolating Ma- laysia and continuing efforts for a convention with the other G-77 countries. The G-77 was not fully united on this issue. Taib acknowledges that development of a common G-77 position for UNCED, particularly on ªnancial issues, was only achieved after “a very difªcult, exhaustive and strenuous negotiation which continued until the late hours.”37 Johnson argues that other Southern countries might have been brought over to support a convention, or even to signing a convention in Rio, if OECD countries had “upped their offer and . . . put new money on the table earlier, conditional on the G-77 keeping their side of the bargain.”38 Malaysia would then have had much less support from other G-77 countries if it had been clear that Malaysian actions were in danger of up- setting the general ªnancial boat. This echoes the words of Angela Harkavy, an environmental consultant who served on the US delegation to PrepCom 4, just before Rio: The difªculty in agreeing on a forest convention is perceived to be due to the inºexible positions of the US on climate change, ªnances, technology and the call for a desertiªcation convention. Some analysts believe that President Bush’s presence at the Earth Summit, plus more ºexibility towards ªnancial issues, and a kick-off toward a desertiªcation convention could provide a boost for the forest convention. . . . [S]ome African countries . . . might be supportive of the US’s call for a forest convention, if they succeed in winning special attention to their problems, such as in a separate desertiªcation convention. Malaysia...would be isolated, and the world could move toward a forest convention.39 It may be noted that the US did ªnally support future negotiation of a separate desertiªcation convention during UNCED—while, however, making it clear,

35. Panjabi 1997, 144. 36. Sullivan 1993, 161. 37. Taib 1997, 54–55. 38. Johnson 1993, 7. 39. Harkavy 1992, 12. Deborah S. Davenport • 117 along with the EU, that there would be no extra aid ºows for this issue. Not being part of a bigger package, this political support for a desertiªcation convention had minimal results on the forest negotiations, apart from perhaps contrib- uting to the achievement of the Forest Principles themselves, which for a time looked in doubt. The second reason for caution in concluding that Malaysia’s stance on sovereignty caused the forest negotiations to fail is the question of whether that position really was Malaysia’s ªnal word. There was ample evidence that Malaysia Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 was not completely closed to the idea, at least not if it had been offered an adequate quid pro quo. Grubb et al. assert that the Malaysians did not really object to the concept of a convention but to the form of convention proposed by the developed countries, and that their objection was “based not upon a claim of absolute sovereignty but in large part upon differing perceptions of equity,”40 in other words, a fear that the developing countries would bear too much of the cost of curbing deforestation. Statements were made by Malaysia throughout the process that left the door open for a deal that could have shifted the anti coalition’s calculation of the value of agreement. At Prep Com 2, for instance, Malaysia presented a list of “points of concern” that referred to the need for technology transfer and additional ªnancial resources as “compensation for opportunity cost foregone” to the extent that any convention would commit developing countries to halting or substantially slowing deforestation by reducing timber extraction or other activities, even while claiming to reject the idea of a convention.41 Indeed, the Earth Summit Update reported a statement by the head of the Malaysian delegation, Razali Ismail, after PrepCom 2 that studies on “the importance of forests in economic and social development and quantiªcation of the economic values of forests,” which had been called for in a PrepCom 2 decision, “could be the basis of eventual negotiations on a forest agreement.”42 In other words, it appears that the value of effective agreement to the anti side could have been raised by linking acceptance of some of the South’s demands to the pro coalition’s desire for agreement. Humphreys reaches the same conclusion:

The South reiterated . . . claims [for debt relief and technology transfer from North to South], using forests as a bargaining chip in an attempt to reach a trade-off. Hence the Malaysian intervention in PrepCom 2...can...be seen as an attempt to introduce forests as a bargaining chip.43

The US made an unexpected ªnal call for language in the Forest Principles on the need for future negotiation of a GFC during concurrent negotiations on UNCED’s Agenda 21 plan of action at the ªnal PrepCom. In response, Ambassa-

40. Grubb et al. 1993, 36, fn 15. Taib (1997, 58) also makes this point. 41. Humphreys 1996, 91. 42. Earth Summit Update No. 1. July 1991, 2. 43. Humphreys 1996, 96. 118 • An Alternative Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations dor Ting once again appeared to leave room for negotiation on the issue of sovereignty:

...Wewish to underline the supremacy of our sovereignty over our forests. We are certainly not holding them in custody for those who have destroyed their own forests, and now try to claim ours as part of the heritage of mankind....Ourmessage is clear; we are prepared to play our part in the great

environmental effort. We are prepared to sustainably use our sovereign for- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 est resources. However, we require ªnancial resources and technology to carry out our environmental obligations.44

At one further meeting of G-77 countries before UNCED itself, in April 1992, the Malaysian Prime Minister again seemed to give an opening: “If it is in the interests of the rich that we do not cut down our trees then they must com- pensate us for the loss of income.”45 Malaysia even proposed a “Greening of the World Initiative” as a mechanism for this, cleverly—perhaps cynically—calling upon the global community to target at least 30% of the earth’s terrestrial area to be greened by the year 2000. Those countries that did not have suitable land area should instead contribute adequate funds to developing countries with available land, through a previously proposed global “green fund.”46 Even some Americans recognized that forests were being used as leverage, held “hostage” to value-claiming issue linkage by the South. As the US chief negotiator at UNCED observed at the time, “Some countries are reluctant to take concrete steps to preserve their forests. They are trying to get the money before agreeing to do anything.”47 This observation does not jibe with later US assertions that the sovereignty issue was an insurmountable obstacle to agreement. One ªnal reason for caution in concluding that the Malaysian position on sovereignty was the ultimate cause for the failure to achieve a binding global forest agreement is that, as Mickelson argues, even assuming that Malaysia was obsessed with its sovereign rights over its forests, a respect for sovereignty over forest resources need not actually rule out a forest convention.48 The reverse is arguably true: an explicit afªrmation of the principle of sovereignty is a prereq- uisite for developing country participation in a forest convention. The question is whether sovereignty precludes an acknowledgement that decision-making about the exploitation of forest resources should take into account any interests that go beyond national ones (leaving aside the fact that states in whose territo- ries forests are found also receive a share of the global beneªts from forests). A subtle distinction must be made between that legitimate concern of the interna-

44. Statement by Ambassador Ting Wen Lian at UN Press Brieªng, Rio de Janeiro, 2 June, 1992, quoted in Taib 1997, 83. 45. Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohamad, Malaysian Prime Minister, quoted in Humphreys 1996, 101. 46. Grubb et al. 1993, 36, fn 15. 47. US chief negotiator Curtis Bohlen, quoted in The Guardian, 10 June, 1992, 8. 48. Mickelson 1996, 249. Deborah S. Davenport • 119

tional community and the assertion of a more direct international interest in controlling national decision-making over national forest resources.

Lack of US Leadership as an Alternative Explanation A competing explanation for the failure to achieve a binding agreement on forests at UNCED must be considered: the lack of true leadership by the US,

deªned as the capacity and will to manipulate preferences in its drive for a forest Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 convention. A number of authors allude to American failure to shift the interests of the anti coalition. Porter and Brown, for example, attribute the failures of UNCED generally not to the sovereignty stake they earlier cite as behind the South’s inability to leverage concessions from the North, but to US intransigence:

Only one country—the US—had the economic and political power and the expertise to play the lead role in...acomplex and wide-ranging set of North-South negotiations, had it chosen to do so....[I]nstead, the US played more the role of veto power....Theresult was that other OECD countries often were not pushed to move beyond least-common-denomina- tor positions, and developing countries were not offered any real bargains.49

This ªts well with what one US negotiator on forests at PrepCom 4 remembers:

For the US the negotiation of the Forest Principles was extremely difªcult. Our position was this: no money and no technology transfer, [but developing countries must] conserve tropical forests.50

The US did offer two relatively low-cost linkages at UNCED itself. First, the US proposed a $150 million “Forests for the Future” Fund, based upon recogni- tion within the Bush Administration that the US’ position was untenable. How- ever, according to one US ofªcial, while this proposal did help achieve the conclusion of the Principles in Rio and improved the US’ standing somewhat, it was followed by a general sense of disappointment among the US negotiators when it did not lead to an agreement on negotiating a treaty later.51 Second, the US changed its position to support African proposals for a convention on desertiªcation.52 Contemporaneous reports drew a link between this gesture and the US’ hope to gain concessions in the Forest Principles talks. These, as well as reports from some African delegates, made it clear that while no explicit link was made it was certainly made implicitly; nevertheless, the president of the G-77, Koª W. Awoonor of Ghana, maintained solidarity with Malaysia, say-

49. Porter and Brown 1996, 118. 50. US ofªcial, personal communication, August 2001. 51. US ofªcial, personal communication, August 2001. 52. Porter and Brown 1996, 199, fn. 82. 120 • An Alternative Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations ing that the question of sovereignty to exploit one’s own resources affects all developing countries.53 These initiatives did little to shift the anti coalition’s position. Southern NGOs at UNCED accused the US of maintaining a position, in effect, that “what I have I keep, what you have I will take,”54 in demanding commitments from the countries of the South on forests while refusing to undertake meaningful commitments on ªnance and other issues within the larger context of the negotiations on Agenda 21. In the end, the prospect of reaching any agreement, even on Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 the non-binding Forest Principles themselves, looked to be at risk.55 Given that the US had no ºexibility to make ªnancial concessions within the Forest Princi- ples or within Agenda 21 in order to increase the value of agreement for the anti coalition, nor the ability to lower the value of non-agreement through threats of punishment, the only recourse for achieving any resolution of the negotiations was to make the ultimate concession: to drop bracketed text in the Forest Princi- ples calling for the negotiation of a convention. The US and the pro coalition thus lost their push even for an agreement on the possibility of a future GFC. The only language that hinted at the possibility was a statement in the Preamble (a weaker placement than within the operational text itself), that

[i]n committing themselves to the prompt implementation of these principles, countries also decide to keep them under assessment for their ade- quacy with regard to further international cooperation on forest issues.56

In dropping language on future negotiations for a convention, the US won agreement on a Statement of Forest Principles that in effect reºected the global status quo on forests.

A Counterfactual Test Because the game of negotiation requires keeping one’s real interests hidden, it may be impossible ever to obtain conclusive evidence on whether the G-77 preferred at that time to maintain the status quo of “absolute sovereignty” over its forest resources, or whether it would have preferred to achieve more in terms of its larger goals. However, one way to investigate competing claims of causality is to use counterfactuals.57 Assuming, for the moment, that both US intransigence on linkages as well as a Southern obsession with sovereignty were present, the relative importance of each can be assessed by asking what would have happened if one of the factors had existed but the other had not.58 Two competing

53. Terra Viva, 12 June, 1992, p. 9. 54. SUNS (South North Development Monitor) at the Earth Summit, No. 3. 10 June, 1992, 1–2. 55. Earth Summit Times, 12 June, 1992, 1, 16. 56. United Nations 1992, Preamble (d)1. 57. Fearon 1991. 58. Fearon 1991, 183, fn 35. Deborah S. Davenport • 121

counterfactuals may be stated, to the effect that “if it had not been the case that C (or not C), it would have been the case that E (or not E),”59 to see if either leads to a different outcome than what was achieved in reality, attempting to make the argument as plausible as possible. Each counterfactual can then be tested by invoking general principles and drawing on knowledge of historical facts relevant to a counterfactual scenario. The two counterfactuals may be stated as follows: Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 1) If it had been the case that, ceteris paribus, Malaysia was indifferent to “sovereignty” claims, there would have been a treaty. 2) If it had been the case that, ceteris paribus, the US offered leadership in the form of incentives or threats in order to change the G-77’s perception of the value of agreement, there would have been a treaty. Are both true? If not, which? If so, which is of greater relative importance? In- voking the rationality principle, it must be shown that one choice is more desirable than other possible choices.60 First, would the choice to have a treaty have been more desirable to Malaysia than no treaty if Malaysia were indifferent re- garding sovereignty and the US did little to change its preferences? We know empirically that the incentives the US did offer had little to do with Malaysia: $150 million to be spread over the globe would barely reach Malaysia if at all, while the US’ support for a desertiªcation treaty, assuming an attempted linkage, was intended to beneªt African and other countries with climatic conditions that Malaysia did not share. The question is whether Malaysia would ever see the choice of a treaty as desirable without any coercion from the US. The US and others reasoned that the sustainable management of forests should be seen as economically bene- ªcial to the countries themselves. But this depends on discount rate—how much Malaysia and/or other countries value maintaining their forests for the future compared to the present income they can derive from harvesting forest products. We must assume that, even without sovereignty as an issue, rational policy-makers in Malaysia and other G-77 states perceived deforestation as more economically beneªcial than forest preservation. Thus, the cost of agreement would outweigh its beneªts unless measures were taken by a leader in the negotiations to shift the value of agreement for them upward or the value of no agreement downward. There is no reason to think that Malaysia would ever see a treaty as desirable unless such a valuation shift occurred, either through manipulation by another party or through exogenous events. With regard to the converse counterfactual proposition, if we again invoke the rationality principle and consider which choice seems the most desirable, the question is whether coercion from the US might ever have overcome a

59. Fearon 1991, 169. 60. Fearon 1991, 182, fn 29. 122 • An Alternative Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations

ªxation on sovereignty on the part of the Malaysians. Assuming that the Malay- sians were in fact rational actors, we must assume the existence of a point at which the beneªts to be gained from an agreement would overcome the cost of maintaining sovereignty. The desire for sovereignty might make an agreement more costly for the pro coalition to achieve, but even then if adequate incentives or threats were applied to make the value of agreement outweigh no agreement for Malaysia, a rational Malaysia should have switched its position. Could the coercion necessary to shift Malaysia’s position ever have been cost-effective for Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 the US? This question can be answered sufªciently by considering the reality of what the US did offer. Dropping the call for a forest convention was a much less costly measure for the US than giving in to the provisions the South demanded, particularly in Agenda 21, in return for such language. In the end it appears that the prospective beneªts to the US from a world forest convention, or from even a promise of negotiations toward one, were simply not enough to warrant more incentives than those the US offered at Rio. Each of the two counterfactuals deals with one of the two most concerned countries in the UNCED forest debate. The ªrst posits a different attitude on the part of Malaysia; the second, a different position for the US. We then ask which counterfactual is more plausible. We ªnd that in the ªrst case, even if Malaysia had not used the sovereignty argument, the possibility of a binding agreement or an agreement on negotiations for a future binding agreement would still have been remote. In the second case, if the US’ position on compromise had been different (assuming the beneªts of a treaty to the US could have out- weighed a much costlier treaty), it appears likely that a stronger agreement could have been reached. It therefore appears that the US could have overcome Malaysia’s position. Of the two counterfactual propositions, only the second is plausible; it was not Malaysia’s position on sovereignty that prevented effective agreement, it was the US’ own interests, as determined by the prospective cost of agreement to the US.

US Interests: A Breakdown When the perceived costs and beneªts of a forest convention to the US in 1992 are broken down, a clear relationship between US interests and the outcome of the negotiations can be seen.

Beneªts Environmental beneªts: The US certainly had an interest in the beneªt of avoiding the environmental costs of deforestation by taking measures to combat it, given the worry that tropical deforestation was occurring at an unprecedented rate. The US proposal would encourage, if not require, environmental action, mainly on the part of tropical forest countries, and US policy-makers expected this to produce an improvement over the status quo. While some of the environmental Deborah S. Davenport • 123

beneªts would be felt only at the local level, particularly in countries with tropical forest, others were more global and would beneªt the US as well. This would be qualiªed, however, by the lack of ability to measure the transboundary environmental consequences of forest degradation, as identiªed by Dimitrov,61 which would hinder perceptions of true beneªts and thus bias a cost-beneªt calculation against a favorable perception of the value of effective agreement. Avoidance of economic costs: The US initially placed some value on the prospective beneªt of avoiding competition from timber sources that did not have Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 to meet environmental standards as high as those in the US. However, the industry itself was somewhat divided on this: leveling the playing ªeld would be of interest to US timber producers and from an economic angle this was probably the most signiªcant beneªt sought. However, the more economically powerful timber processing branch of the industry did not stand to beneªt as much, given that processors also have an interest in importing cheap raw logs rather than more expensive locally-produced timber that meets higher standards.62 Po- tential beneªts of a convention also had to be balanced against the possible threat of some costs to the US industry from higher international standards or international oversight.63 Positive economic beneªts: The possibility of a particularistic positive beneªt was not in evidence in the forest domain during the forest negotiations leading up to UNCED. The proposed forest convention did not offer US producers a competitive advantage over their competitors nor the prospect of greater proªts from new methods of timber production or processing. Nor would timber producers beneªt from innovations in timber substitutes that a convention might have promoted. Encouragement of substitutes has never been raised as an ob- jective for a convention or in the Forest Principles, although substitutes for some uses exist, such as steel framing for housing. Indeed, timber producers as well as international development agencies frequently raise the question of whether substitutes in fact decrease the value of timber, and thereby the value of the forests from which it is taken, thus increasing the possibility of deforestation so as to put the land to other economic uses. For these reasons, the US forest industry was not a major proponent of a forest convention during the UNCED process. This lack of industry interest indicates that the total expected beneªt of a convention was fairly low for the US during the UNCED process.

Costs Costs of substitutes/halting activities: As to costs, there were few costs to the US in its original proposal because the proposal did not call for action on its part, apart from a vague reference to providing technical assistance. This is to be ex-

61. Dimitrov 2003. 62. US industry representative, personal communication, December 2001. 63. US industry representative, personal communication, January 2002. 124 • An Alternative Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations pected, as countries usually propose what they themselves are already doing, as the least costly or disruptive to themselves, just as states are more likely to adopt regulations that have a low cost.64 Certainly the Forest Principles as ªnally agreed held no real cost implications for the US industry. The two major costs of taking action—the cost of substitutes and the cost of halting or restricting economic activity—did not arise. Substitutes for timber in the US were not proposed and were never debated, nor was there talk of halting any economic activity (speciªcally, timber production) in the US that depended on deforestation, Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 despite the Paciªc Northwest controversy over old-growth logging that was taking place in the US at that time. Cost of manipulation: In the end, it was the third type of potential cost, the cost of manipulating other states into agreement, that tipped the scales in favor of no binding agreement (nor any mention of the future possibility of a binding agreement) at Rio. The US’ interest in using its resources to manipulate the preferences of the anti coalition—as determined by the shifting net value to the US of a convention—was not great enough to allow for effective leadership. This was exacerbated by the relatively high value of no agreement for the anti coalition in terms of sovereignty over their forest resources and the very low or non- existent value of agreement to the anti coalition if it were not linked to other value-claiming demands. Because the US actually lacked a clear interest in an effective forest convention, based on assessment of its costs and beneªts, it made few efforts to shift the costs and beneªts of effective agreement for other actors. The paucity of leadership on the part of the US thus links the economic assessment of US interest to the lack of an effective outcome in this case. One question remains: if there was so little to be gained from a global forest convention for the US, why propose it at all? Even in the absence of the value-claiming issue linkage by Malaysia and other members of the anti coalition, it does not appear from my typology that the beneªts of a convention would be so great as to be worth the effort, particularly given that the affected US industry was only lukewarm toward the idea at best. Perhaps the US was prompted to propose a convention simply out of concern to do something about deforestation, before the potential costs to be in- curred were recognized.65 However, a more rational answer has also been sug- gested, involving a different kind of beneªt for the US which was not to be gained from the convention itself but from simply making a credible proposal. According to a US ofªcial, the main attraction of a proposal for a forest convention had to do with its relationship to the climate change negotiations. In 1990, the EC and the G-77 appeared to be on the verge of making a deal on tit-for-tat protocols within the climate change regime then being negotiated. The EC was proposing a forest protocol to the proposed Framework Convention on Climate

64. DeSombre 2000, 232. 65. Another possibility lies in a rumor that the American president of that era thought he was only agreeing to host a meeting when the proposal for a forest “convention” was put to him (British forest negotiator, personal communication, July 2004). Deborah S. Davenport • 125

Change (UNFCCC), which would go to forests as carbon dioxide sinks, while the G-77 was proposing an energy protocol in order to shift attention back to the North as the source of carbon emissions. Although the EC was prepared to make a quid pro quo deal with the developing country proponents of the energy protocol, the US was adamantly opposed. Any proposed regulation of green- house gas sources held an immediate threat of enormous costs for the US in particular as the world’s largest user of energy and producer of carbon emis-

sions.66 Because the threatened costs of climate change regulation were so high Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 for the US, the US government was prepared to forestall any such protocol deal even if it meant negotiating an entirely new international instrument. The idea was therefore formed to nip the protocol deal in the bud by superseding it with a full forest convention.67 The goal of forestalling a protocol deal was accomplished through gaining European acceptance of the proposal for the forest convention; once that was achieved there were no overwhelming beneªts to be gained by the US from a convention itself.

Conclusion The explanation for the lack of an effective binding agreement on forests in 1992, and even the lack of a commitment to future negotiation of a binding forest agreement, lies in the cost of leadership for the US. Arguably, the US was ready to bear some small cost for a forest convention, as witness its relatively costless support for a desertiªcation convention and the $150 million for forest conservation in developing countries that President Bush offered in Rio. While these may well have helped the US to win a developing country commitment to sign the Forest Principles and secured vague preambular language on possibili- ties for future cooperation, they were not enough to change the anti coalition’s valuation of agreement relative to the no agreement outcome; costlier actions were needed. Leadership by the US was not forthcoming because the cost of leadership was not balanced out by beneªts for the main US domestic players involved. A breakdown of US interests explains why the US was unwilling to bear the cost of leadership. In this case it was not variation in US power that ex- plained the outcome, but a shift in the US’ interest, due to a shift in the expected costs and beneªts of a convention. This explanation has implications for other cases of both success and failure in efforts to achieve international environmental cooperation. Given the outcome of this case, I predict that it is more likely to be variation in US interests that explains variation in outcomes on international environmental cooperation, based on the typology of costs and beneªts identiªed here, than variation in US power or lack of common interest among

66. Rowlands 2001, 45. 67. US ofªcial, personal communication, August 2001. 126 • An Alternative Explanation for the Failure of the UNCED Forest Negotiations states in the ªrst place. Further tests of this model in ongoing work evaluate whether US interests in more successful cases of overcoming initial asymmetric deadlock also correlate to an assessment of potential costs and beneªts as identiªed here. After Rio there have been two interesting developments with regard to the push for a global forest convention. First, the question has been kept alive in the global forest policy “talk shops”68 that evolved in the aftermath of the Rio conference, despite the lack of language in the Forest Principles and despite opposi- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/5/1/105/1819031/1526380053243549.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 tion from key countries. Second, and even more remarkable, the two key oppo- nents in Rio ostensibly reversed positions in the mid-1990s. Support for a global forest convention within the US administration began to waver as early as 1993, and the US ofªcially switched positions to become the leading veto state in 1997. Malaysia, for its part, switched roles to become one of the leading proponents of a convention in 1993. These shifts are compatible with the pre- dictions of my model and with the argument presented here, bolstering the idea that Malaysia’s position might have been shifted had the US offered it enough (although whether its current shift to support a convention represents a shift toward favoring an environmentally effective convention is of course a different question). The US’ shift, meanwhile, supports the argument that a forest convention was not really in the US’ clear interest. A burning question now is whether, in the review of the UN Forum on Forests to be undertaken in May 2005, states will ªnally agree to begin negotiations on a convention. According to my framework, the fact that the US remains opposed should lead to yet another equivocal outcome, as has happened not only in Rio but at every crossroads reached in the global forest policy dialogue since then. Indeed, available evidence indicates that states are far from reaching a consensus on making another attempt to begin negotiations for a convention.69 There thus arises the same question of whether a pro coalition might ever have the capacity and will to manipulate the preferences of the US toward favoring agreement. My argument, that this will be virtually impossible given the United States’ own dominance of the international system, leads to a pessimis- tic prediction for international cooperation on this issue. However, my model also incorporates the possibility that the interests of US domestic actors can shift, due either to technological developments, increasing regulation at the subnational level, or a shift in the calculations of the costs of the environmental problem itself for the US, as scientiªc knowledge increases or perhaps as it becomes clear with the passage of time that international arrangements put in place earlier are ineffective in ameliorating a targeted environmental problem.70 Together these developments might provide a catalyst for increasing US interest

68. Personal communication, NGO observer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (1995– 1997), the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (1998–2000), and the UN Forum on Forests (2001-present), September 2004. 69. United Nations Forum on Forests 2004. 70. Miles et al. 2001. Deborah S. Davenport • 127 in binding international regulation to mitigate forest loss. While this may not be a sufªcient condition for reaching an effective international agreement— given the unlikelihood that any compensation offered will ever be commensu- rate with the economic costs of giving up deforestation for all countries concerned—it appears to be a necessary one.

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