International Environmental Law and Developing Nations Essay

The global environment, in its magnificent entireness, is unburdened by boundaries that distance peoples and communities on the ground, created by manmade issues of race, language, and religion or through greed, conquest and political machination. Man, despite his many victories over nature is helpless in the face of universal natural forces and unable to protect the limited environs of his homeland from global environmental developments. While this ensures that even the most powerful nations are not able to restrict natural forces like the rains and the winds, it also leads to the effects of environmental degradation in one area manifesting themselves in peculiar ways in distant locations. Sulphur emissions in one country cause acid rain in another. Depletion of the ozone layer from CFCs used in one nation can lead to skin cancer on the opposite side of the world. The global environment is an integrated, yet evolving system. Such drivers of environmental change as population pressure and pollution know no boundaries; in fact the waste generated from such phenomena is released into the global commons of the seas and the air. When forests are cut down the ensuing carbon sequestration hastens global climate change. This is however only part of the devastation that occurs because forests also perform a variety of other ecosystem services, which include improving air quality, enriching soil, providing renewable resources, regulating hydrology, and contributing to biodiversity. The occurrence of many such natural phenomena are choked and their benefits lost when peoples and communities act unthinkingly and under the belief that their natural resources are theirs to do with as they please. (Barrett, 2005) Recent decades have seen the emergence of a global agreement amongst nations to act together to resist further environmental depredation and promote sustainable development, which in turn has resulted in the signing of numerous treaties and the enactment of laws concerning diverse environmental issues. While treaties and laws have been agreed upon and signed, their actual implementation has been inadequate due to reasons that include differing perceptions of individual nations about the various provisions of these agreements and their potential to impact national or regional objectives, as well as available infrastructure, systems and resources. (Victor, 2001) This assignment aims to delve into and investigate the reasons for these differences, especially the ones that exist between developing and developed nations, the impact of these issues upon global and regional environmental conditions and the actions needed to correct the situation. 2. Commentary International law has become very relevant to the environment in recent decades. Most nations, including Australia have entered into various treaties, conventions and agreements, many of them at the initiative of the United Nations. Important treaties signed since the beginning of the eighties include the Montreal Protocol on the Ozone Layer, the Convention on the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the World Heritage Convention and the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change. The task of governing these treaties and safeguarding these enormously complex ecosystems falls on a number of local and international organizations, the most important of which is the United Nations Environment Programme, a key UN body entrusted with the task of coordinating the work of different organizations and gathering information. (Barrett, 2005) With more than 150 international much hyped treaties covering practically every aspect of life on earth, air and sea and providing for their protection from hazardous waste, deforestation, over fishing and other forms of depredation, the world should have by now become environmentally very safe. However even as extensive international action on working out treaties and agreements takes place, the actual position on the ground remains vastly different. Most of the provisions of these international laws exist only on paper, the constraints of international diplomacy and relations making them virtually irrelevant. (Mastny & French, 2002) The controversy surrounding the Kyoto Protocol represents the diverse issues raised by different nations that lead to differences of opinion, disagreements and finally delays in carrying out much needed environmental actions. The Kyoto Protocol was drawn up in Japan in 1997 to implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), its objective being to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by establishing reduction targets and by developing national programmes and policies. It binds industrialised nations to reduce worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases by an average of 5. 2% below their 1990 levels. Whilst a number of developed nations have ratified the treaty and committed their governments to achieving the set targets, the US has gone back on its earlier commitment (given in 2001), and President Bush has stated that the US will never sign the treaty. Even as negotiations are underway for enlarging the number of ratifying countries, strong opposition to ratifying the treaty still remains in Australia. While both the US and Australian administrations argue that the potential costs of implementing Kyoto make it detrimental to economic growth, they also feel Kyoto to be fundamentally flawed as it excludes developing countries, which account for 80 % of the world’s population, and whose carbon emissions will inevitably grow as they develop. Both China and India are exempt from Kyoto targets because of their low per capita emissions and their development needs. The fact that the US accounts for 25 % of global greenhouse emissions today and that Australia has one of the highest per capita emissions in the world has not dented the resolve of these counties not to ratify the treaty. (Shaffner, 2007)