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The interest-based explanation of international environmental policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Detlef Sprinz  and
Tapani Vaahtoranta
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Despite growing international environmental interdependence, the international system lacks a central authority to foster environmental protection. As a consequence, countries have adopted different policies to reduce international environmental problems. More specifically, costly regulations are not universally supported. In order to explain the success and failure of international environmental regulation, it is necessary to systematically focus on the factors that shape the environmental foreign policy of sovereign states. Since such an approach is missing from the literature, we develop an interest-based explanation of support for international environmental regulation and postulate what impact it should have on state preferences for international environmental regulation. Specifically we apply our framework to two prominent cases of negotiations on atmospheric pollution control, namely, efforts to protect the stratospheric ozone layer and the regulation of transboundary acidification (“acid rain”) in Europe.

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International Organization , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , Winter 1994 , pp. 77 - 105
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Copyright © The IO Foundation and Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

We thank Cary Coglianese, Kenneth Hanf, Madeleine Hösli, Rudy Lewanski, Martin List, John Odell, Tom Princen, Arild Underdal, Albert Weale, and two reviewers for International Organization for helpful comments. Val Bowers's editorial assistance is greatly appreciated. In addition, Detlef Sprinz gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Institute for the Study of World Politics in Washington, D.C., the Population-Environment Dynamics Project, School of Public Health, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. We gladly accept the responsibility for all remaining errors and omissions.

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15 The LRTAP Convention serves as an umbrella convention for the international regime on the regulation of transboundary acidification (acid rain) in the member states of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Canada and the United States are members of the UNECE as are all European countries.

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24 We refer to the knowledge available to decision makers in the early 1980s rather than since the late 1980s. Only after the conclusion of the Montreal Protocol did it become evident that the thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer disproportionally affects the polar regions.

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27 Quoted from Whitney, Craig R., “EC Official Says Europeans Soon Can Shield Ozone Layer,” International Herald Tribune, 6 March 1989, p. 5.Google Scholar

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30 Ibid., p. 35.

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32 Australia had also been invited, but it did not participate in the conference.

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48 Glas, , “Protecting the Ozone Layer,” p. 150.Google Scholar

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58 The interviews of experts were undertaken by Detlef Sprinz as part of a larger research effort on the international regulation of transboundary air pollution in Europe. For details, see Sprinz, “Why Countries Support International Environmental Agreements.”

59 Hettelingh, Jean-Paul, Downing, Robert F., and Smet, Peter A.M. de, Mapping Critical Loads for Europe, Coordination Center for Effects (CCE) technical report no. 1 (Bilthoven: CCE, National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection, the Netherlands, 1991).Google Scholar

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72 This applies both to the Vienna and the LRTAP Conventions.

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