ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
as carbon taxes. Certainly, international efforts to mitigate climate change
have been far less successful than action on ozone depletion.Critical question 1
Why has it been easier to obtain international co-operation to prevent ozone
depletion than climate change?◗ Accounting for regimes
This section identifies the key factors determining the success of environ-
mental regime bargaining, drawing in particular on the ozone and climate
change treaties.
Regime formation is aided by the willingness of a powerful nation, or
group of nations, to take a leadership role by cajoling or bullying weaker
states into supporting a treaty. Alead statewill be committed to achieving
effective international action on an issue; it will accelerate the bargain-
ing process and seek the support of other states for a regime (Porter et al.
2000 : 36). The USA, the most powerful country in the world, is the obvious
candidate to play a hegemonic role in a way similar to its imposition of
theBretton Woods system of trade liberalisation and stable currencies on
theinternational community in the aftermath of the Second World War
(Gilpin 1987 ). However, although the USA played a leading role in ozone
diplomacy, its record in the Antarctic, acid rain, biodiversity and climate
change treaty negotiations shows that it has more often obstructed interna-
tional co-operation. Consequently, it has fallen to other economically pow-
erful states to take a lead role. Australia and France were instrumental in
pushing for the 1991 Madrid Protocol banning mineral extraction in the
Antarctic (Elliott 1994 ). On acid rain, Sweden and Norway were lead states
in bringing about the Geneva Convention on Long Range Transboundary
Air Pollution (LRTAP) in 1979, while Germany later took the lead in reach-
ing agreement on the Helsinki Protocol (Levy 1993). During the Vienna Con-
vention ozone negotiations, Finland and Sweden submitted the initial draft
agreement before the USA adopted a lead role in proposing the 95 per cent
reduction in CFCs. Groups of states can also make a significant contribu-
tion, as illustrated by the Toronto Group in ozone diplomacy and the EU
in pushing for firm emission reduction commitments at the Kyoto Sum-
mit. Indeed, the EU, representing a rich and powerful bloc of industrialised
nations, is an increasingly important player in environmental diplomacy (see
Chapter 10 ).
Conversely, aveto statewill impede negotiations or stall implementation
of an agreement. Veto states are most significant where the involvement of
aparticular country, or group of countries, is essential for the negotiation
of an effective regime. Thus, knowing that any climate change agreement
would be ineffective without its involvement, the US government was able