E NVIRONMENTAL D IPLOMACY

Kurk Dorsey

Environmental diplomacy can be broken into two general categories: conventions regulating the use of natural resources, and conventions regulating pollution. In each case, the central problem is that political boundaries rarely reflect biological boundaries, so that as national economies consume resources and produce pollution, they spread environmental problems far beyond their national boundaries. The sheer size of the U.S. economy has given it both the power to degrade the environment around the world and the influence to push diplomatic efforts to protect the environment. For most of its history, the United States has been one of the leading nations in the field of environmental diplomacy, but at the end of the twentieth century the United States found itself more often on the outside, as global discussions produced treaties that were increasingly unacceptable to the U.S. government. This loss of leadership has coincided with a shift away from bilateral treaties, first to small multilateral treaties and then to conventions that are open to every nation. That shift has been a logical reaction to an increasing international awareness that some of the biggest threats to human society come from global environmental problems, but it has meant that the United States has been less able to shape the course of events to its liking.

Environmental diplomacy has almost always been a secondary, or even tertiary, goal of U.S. foreign policy. Simultaneously, though, it is often the product of intense domestic political pressure, as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have done a masterful job of putting their members' concerns on the diplomatic agenda. As such, it usually reflects the primary diplomatic and domestic goals of the time. Hence, in the twentieth century, such trends and policies as progressivism, the Good Neighbor Policy, containment, détente, and environmentalism, as well as the state of the national and world economy, all played crucial roles in shaping specific treaties. In addition, the increase in scientific knowledge as well as public awareness of and faith in that science were crucial elements in shaping the course of environmental diplomacy during the twentieth century. The United States has almost always been a strong proponent of using science as an impartial tool in international environmental protection, particularly in moving away from static treaties to dynamic bodies that can address changing problems. Finally, one must acknowledge that just as there are formal and informal forms of diplomacy, so too are there formal and informal kinds of environmental diplomacy. While the focus here is largely on conventions and treaties, it should be remembered that the sheer appetite of the United States for imported goods created an unintended international environmental impact that might actually be greater than that generated by formal environmental diplomacy.

See also A RBITRATION , M EDIATION, AND C ONCILIATION ; G LOBALIZATION ; S CIENCE AND T ECHNOLOGY ; T REATIES .