Science, Politics and International Environmental Policy

Book Review Essay Science, Politics and International EnvironmentalJudithBook Review A. Layzer Essay Policy • Judith A. Layzer Edward A. Parson. 2002. Protecting the Ozone Layer: Science, Strategy, and Negotia- tion in the Shaping of a Global Environmental Regime. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reiner Grundmann. 2001. Transnational Environmental Policy: Reconstructing Ozone. London: Routledge. In 1987, 30 nations signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, a historic international agreement to reduce chloroºuoro- carbons (CFCs), halons, and other ozone-depletingsubstances. The controversy that ultimately yielded this agreement dates back to the mid-1960s, when scientists began to suspect that pollutants from several kinds of human activities were depletingthe stratospheric ozone layer, which protects life on earth by screening out damaging, high-energy ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Though very little was known about the likely impacts of ozone loss, experts worried about effects on human health and ecosystems. In 1974, Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina identiªed CFCs as the most serious threat to stratospheric ozone, and shortly thereafter a small number of countries includingthe US decided unilaterally to restrict the use of those chemicals as propellants in aerosol spray cans. It was obvious, however, that the problem of ozone depletion was global and that an international solution was needed. Serious efforts to reach an international agreement to protect the stratospheric ozone layer got underway in the late 1970s but for nearly a decade ended repeatedly in deadlock. This is hardly surprising: regulation of common pool resources at the international level is dauntingbecause any singledefector Global Environmental Politics 2:3, August 2002 © 2002 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 118 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152638002320310554 by guest on 30 September 2021 Judith A. Layzer • 119 can undermine a cooperative agreement, and the mechanisms for ensuring compliance are virtually nonexistent. The uncertainty that pervades the scienti- ªc understandingof environmental problems and the impact of policies aimed at stemming them exacerbates the challenges to international cooperation. Yet remarkably, protracted negotiations in the mid-1980s yielded an agreement to cut CFCs by half. Then, in rapid succession, international negotia- tors agreed on a series of measures tightening controls on ozone-depleting substances. The resultingregimeis the most protective and effective international environmental agreement ever enacted: by the end of the 20th century, at only modest cost, worldwide production of ozone-depletingchemicals had dropped by 95 percent from its peak in the late 1980s, and it continues to decline. The ozone case warrants scholarly attention for at least two reasons. First, it is the most progressive attempt to address a global environmental problem to date and hence may serve as a model for dealingwith biodiversity loss, climate change, and other seemingly intractable global environmental issues. Second, it offers insight into a question that has vexed scholars, activists, and policy- makers for decades: what role does science play in environmental policy-making? The answer to this question can inform efforts to design policy-relevant re- search and incorporate new scientiªc insights into our environmental policies, thereby making them more likely to ameliorate our environmental concerns. Two recent accounts, Edward A. Parson’s Protecting the Ozone Layer and Reiner Grundmann’s Transnational Environmental Policy, attempt to explain the evolution of national and international regulation of ozone depleting substances and the role of science therein. Though they adopt very different ap- proaches, both authors reject the most popular explanation for the timingand stringency of the Montreal Protocol and its subsequent amendments. The ªrst such argument is that ozone controls were enacted because they advanced the economic self-interest of the primary players;1 the most common variant of this view is that DuPont pressed for CFC regulation only after it had secretly de- veloped a substitute. Parson and Grundmann persuasively rebut such explanations, however, pointingout that DuPont did not, in fact, have a readily available substitute for CFCs at the time it began endorsing controls on CFC production and emissions. They advance an alternative view that by 1986 DuPont, concerned about its reputation, felt the weight of the scientiªc evi- dence rendered its position untenable and, furthermore, that industry leaders feared the prospect of litigation or unilateral action by the US. Grundmann and Parson are also critical of what Grundmann calls the “cognitive” explanations, in which a decisive shift in scientiªc knowledge prompts policy change. Proponents of these explanations assume that there is sufªcient uncertainty about the world and the likely consequences of different choices that actors cannot easily calculate their interests, so expertise and knowledge confer power. According to Peter Haas, for example, an ecological epistemic community united by common values and cognitive beliefs played a 1. See, for example, Oye and Maxwell 1995. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152638002320310554 by guest on 30 September 2021 120 • Book Review Essay primary role in bringing about the ozone regime by gathering information, forging a consensus on the causes and consequences of ozone depletion, dis- seminating those arguments to government and corporate decision makers, and helpingthem formulate CFC control policies. 2 A more nuanced version of this argument, proffered by Karen Litªn, focuses attention on the way scientiªc knowledge was used to support a precautionary discourse that limited the plau- sible range of policy choices. According to Liftin, ozone policy changed because precautionary discourse shifted decisively from a subordinate to a dominant position, largely as a result of the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985.3 Though compelling, cognitive explanations rest on the existence of a scientiªc consensus, and Parson argues persuasively that the state of the scientiªc knowledge was “complex, multi-dimensional, contested, uncertain, and changing, with degrees of scientiªc consensus on speciªc points increasing and sometimes decreasing, and the identity of the more important or controversial points con- tinually shifting over time” (3). While they differ in detail, what Haas, Litªn, Parson, and Grundmann share is a recognition that knowledge itself has little independent impact on policy; rather, it is the interpretation of knowledge that plays a crucial role. Like Litªn, Grundmann draws on insights from sociology and political science, to develop a framework that emphasizes the role of discourse and issue framingin bringing about policy change. At the center of the framework are policy networks, which comprise actors from the public and private sectors that share worldviews, beliefs about cause-and-effect relations, and preferred solutions. Committed and reputable scientists, whom Grundmann calls “speakers,” mobi- lize members of a policy networks, who then rally around a set of ideas and thereby “prestructure” the conºict that unfolds. In situations of uncertainty, the network that is most trustworthy in its use of symbolic resources—such as scientiªc scenarios and warnings, interpretations of the situation, and proposed solutions—is likely to prevail. The network’s prospects are also contingent on its institutional opportunity structure: networks must be able to capitalize on op- portunities when they arise. At the international level, accordingto Grundmann, cooperation is un - likely to emerge in conºicts that revolve primarily around ideas because efforts at bargaining and interest mediation are likely to fail. Conºict under such cir- cumstances can only be resolved through “integrative bargaining,” which “makes the ‘almost unthinkable’ possible” (21): parties who want speciªc stan- dards or regulations offer side payments to opponents who stand to suffer economic losses. Integrative bargaining, in turn, is only likely to occur if a common good orientation becomes dominant as a result of policy network activity. Applyinghis framework to the ozone case, Grundmann ªnds that the as - cension of the pro-regulatory coalition in the US and Germany—though it oc- 2. Haas 1992, 187–224. 3. Litªn 1994. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152638002320310554 by guest on 30 September 2021 Judith A. Layzer • 121 curred in different ways in each country—was critical to the shift to integrative bargaining at the international level. In the US, the precautionary approach gained status in the late 1970s largely thanks to the efforts of three highly credi- ble advocate scientists at the core of the pro-regulatory alliance. According to Grundmann, their initial deªnition of the problem and proposals for solvingit structured the entire controversy. After a brief initial setback under the Reagan administration, the US resumed the lead in the international arena, largely because the pro-regulatory coalition’s ability to advance its precautionary arguments led to the dissolution of the anti-regulatory coalition. The primary obstacle to international CFC controls was the European Community (EC), whose leadingmembers were concerned about their eco - nomic self-interest. Initially,

Load more