Question

What are the main obstacles to international cooperation on environmental issues? Explain your views by providing examples

Answer 1

The paper discusses the challenges that confront cooperative relations between and among states on the issue of environment. The environment, has over the years, remained a factor over which states’ relationship in the international system has been carried out, both in cooperative manifestations and conflictive expressions. As with many other issues, the global environment represents a series of problems that are so complex and widespread that unilateral measures are not enough to forestall them. Therefore, relationships among states in the international system have been very active over the past decades in addressing many of the environmental problems. In the concerted bid to rid the globe of environmental danger, there had been international environmental conferences on climate change and other cooperative efforts to save the planet. Notwithstanding the obvious successes that have been recorded by these cooperative efforts, international environmental cooperation is still fraught with myriad of challenges. Employing mainly the secondary method of data collection, this paper analyzes the myriad challenges that confront international cooperative efforts to rid the globe of teething environmental problems.

Extrapolating from the quantum of man’s interventions into nature, and the consequent grievous degradation to the environment, Martin Rees spoke seriously of the possibility of this century being our last. In his words “We, the human race, might not survive the twenty first century” (Rees 2004). The globe is indeed under threat. Climate change is real and happening. Very recent studies show that the temperatures of the oceans are rising (Enuka 2017; Ona-Maria 2015; Dryzek 2005). The ozone layer is depleting, with negative implications for food availability, freshwater supply, human health etc. Humanity seems to be heading for the limits at an ever-increasing space, as global population grows exponentially. Scarcity of essential raw materials, water and air pollution, disastrous effects of deforestation, increase in global warming and its concomitant threats to human security, are problems which require solution at the earliest if humanity is to be saved from an unexpected catastrophe. The environment has therefore, over the years remained a factor over which states’ relationship in the international system has been carried out, both in cooperative manifestations and conflictive expressions.

Because these challenges are transfrontier, travelling across national borders,states in the international systems are getting no less pressure to engage in greater international cooperation. Consequently, over the years, there have been various international efforts, starting with the convening of Stockholm Conference in 1972, and later Rio de Janeiro Conference and Johannesburg Conferences in 1992 and 2002 respectively. Through these conferences, the international community has been able to bring into existence and enforcement a plethora of international environmental laws. But notwithstanding the obvious successes that have been recorded by these cooperative efforts, international environmental cooperation is still fraught with myriad of challenges. It is to highlight these challenges and the dangers they portend on the international environmental system, that this paper is aimed.

This section examines the global environmental problems that have been the subject of international cooperation and treaty-making. An environmental problem becomes global or international in a political sense when it crosses national borders or affects the global commons. A case has been made that all environmental problems are international . If they don’t literally spill over national borders, they are likely to occur in many, if not all countries. The realization of these stark and dark realities by the nations of the world has elicited efforts leading to the adoption of several solemn declarations and conclusion of various multilateral treaties embodying resolve of the international community to combat the rampant global environmental degradation and deterioration that threaten the very survival of humanity on planet earth.

Some of these environmental problems are: The ozone layer acts as the world’s ‘sun glasses’ protecting all living orgasms from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. Like a carpet that is divinely placed, the ozone layer protects man and his environment from being directly and harmfully hit by the sun. Worrisomely, the ozone layer has been found to be depleting and leaking. A depleted ozone layer allows increased levels of ultraviolent radiation to get through to earth. The consequence of this depletion to the environment is global, gruesome and grievous. All countries are, and will be affected, though some regions