Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Industrial sulphur dioxide emissions travelled unhindered across national bor-
ders, and this type of transboundary pollution also became an issue elsewhere in
Europe and the wider world. South-westerly winds carried air pollution from
Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland to Scandinavia. In addition, by the mid-
1980s about half of Canada
s annual sulphur deposition was found to originate in
the United States, (although emissions from Ontario also drifted the other side of
the border). And from the 1990s, Japan was regularly showered by acidic rainfall
from China and South Korea, where the demand for electricity had increased
dramatically due to rapid urban-industrial growth.
43
International air pollution
problems required international cooperation if solutions were to be found. An early
example of ground-breaking environmental diplomacy over cross-border air pol-
lution is the Trail smelter dispute (1927
'
1941) between the United States and
Canada, which set an international precedent by establishing the
-
'
principle.
44
After almost 15 years of wrangling between negotiators, a decision was
reached that stated:
'
polluter pays
Under the principles of international law, as well as the law of the United States, no state
has the right to use or permit the use of its territory in such a manner as to cause injury by
fumes in or to the territory of another or the properties or persons therein, when the case is
of serious consequence and the injury is established by clear and convincing evidence.
45
The Trail smelter tribunal ruled that US farmers should receive compensation for
crops and farmland damaged by sulphurous smoke emissions, and the principle that
the
became one of the fundamental underpinnings of international
environmental law. This precedent clearly in
'
polluter pays
'
uenced later political debates over
acid rain in northern Europe, North America and East Asia.
In June 1972, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment con-
vened in Stockholm, bringing world leaders together for the
rst time to talk about
the state of the earth. The Swedish government took this opportunity to highlight
how acid rain from Britain and other European countries was damaging Scandina-
vian lakes and forests. Despite most industrial countries having already accepted the
'
polluter pays
'
principle, this had previously applied to emissions from easily
identi
able sources such as the Trail smelter, located close to a shared border. As far
as the larger-scale acid rain problem was concerned, with the aggregated emissions
from an industrial region in one country harming the environment of another hun-
dreds or even thousands of kilometres away, coming to an agreement was still to
prove dif
cult. In this case, it was no easy matter to demonstrate conclusively that
environmental damage in one place was caused by pollution emissions originating in
another.
46
But two important principles proclaimed at the Stockholm conference,
which echoed the Trail decision, helped to provide the political impetus necessary to
reach an agreement to tackle acid rain. Principle 21 stated that:
43
McNeill (
2000
), Schmandt et al. (
1988
), McCormick (
1997
) and Brimblecombe (
2008
).
44
Wirth (
2000
).
45
Elsom (
1992
) p. 309.
46
Sheail (
1991
), McCormick (
1997
) and Lundgren (
1998
).
