Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the core funding mechanism for averting climate change, preventing the loss
of biodiversity and implementing Agenda 21. It is intended to secure addi-
tional funding for developing countries to implement Agenda 21 and to
achieve further objectives in resolving the main threats to the global environ-
ment. The developing nations succeeded in negotiating favourable voting rules
within the GEF. The decision-making body in the GEF is the Council, which
is made up of 32 members, half of whom represent the developing nations.
Within the context of global environmental treaties and agreements, devel-
oping nations have frequently demanded fi nancial assistance and technological
know-how from their more industrial counterparts as a prerequisite for full
participation in resolving or controlling an environmental threat. They argue
that these rich industrial countries have contributed signifi cantly to pollution
as they developed; therefore, in creating their wealth, they have been respon-
sible for causing global environmental problems.
Although the reality is not this simple, this position is quite common in
global environmental treaties and agreements. The biodiversity regime, for
example, considers technical and fi nancial assistance to developing nations to
be a vital trade-off for allowing the industrial countries and their businesses to
exploit their diverse biological resources. Relocating technology into develop-
ing countries has been too much for the USA, which is not a party to the
Convention on Biological Diversity or its Protocol on Biosafety.
17
International environmental agreements
as regimes
The regime theory evolved within international relations research, as scholars increas-
ingly came to understand that rules do count in international politics. Perhaps the
best-known defi nition of 'regime' is that of Stephen Krasner, expressed in 1982. He
defi nes regimes as 'implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making
procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a specifi c issue-area'.
International lawyers have, naturally, always considered the norms defi ned by
Krasner to be signifi cant to international politics. The signifi cance of the regime
theory in international environmental law is, however, that lawyers were better
equipped to understand international agreements which were, in fact, constantly
changing processes by which both soft and hard-law measures could function as
an integral whole.
This is how most environmental treaties work. Some environmental regimes
start by adopting a highly general framework agreement whose obligations are
not particularly onerous. This process guarantees the earliest possible actions
among the maximum possible number of states. The loose rules of the framework
agreement can be gradually specifi ed and made tighter by protocols negotiated
under the original framework agreement.
A good example is provided by a convention we will study later. The Con-
vention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) was negotiated
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