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Ozone Connections

Expert Networks in Global Environmental Governance

Format: Hardback
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, Saltaire, United Kingdom
Imprint: Greenleaf Publishing
Published: 1st Mar 2002
Dimensions: w 156mm h 234mm
Weight: 534g
ISBN-10: 1874719403
ISBN-13: 9781874719403
Barcode No: 9781874719403
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Synopsis
It is difficult to think of a more significant example of international cooperation to address a problem that threatened the health and wellbeing of the entire planet than the 1987 Montreal Protocol for the Elimination of Ozone-Depleting Substances. This breakthrough in international environmental governance has proved to be an extraordinary success beyond rhetoric or promises. In a dozen years, this international agreement went from an understanding of the need to act in a precautionary manner for mutual benefit to a successful worldwide effort to eliminate chemical substances harmful to our protective ozone layer. The production and consumption of most ozone-depleting substances has now been phased out in developed countries, with developing countries not far behind. What happened and why is of tremendous importance for those looking for guidance in the future, particularly those now involved in hugely complicated negotiations on climate change. The success of the Montreal Protocol has been linked to many factors such as political will, treaty flexibility and the recognition of equity issues raised by developing countries. While comprehensively analysing all of these success factors, Ozone Connections goes on to suggest that a social organization of global governance as typified by the protocol's Technical and Economic Assessment Panel (TEAP) was a unique - but replicable - decisive factor. The book argues that we need to understand how the implementation of complex global environmental agreements depends on the construction and exploitation of social connections among experts who act collectively to define solutions to environmental problems. This highly original and provoking thesis synthesises some of the more exciting social science concepts and methods, while refining our basic understanding of environmental social change and providing policy-makers with concrete success factors to replicate. This book will be essential reading for academics in the fields of sociology, political science, international relations, network studies, human communication, motivation, collaboration and leadership, as well as the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of environmental studies. Businesses will also find many applications for practical use. Finally, the many directly transferable lessons from ozone layer protection make this book a key addition to the growing literature on climate change.

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There is no question that in our increasingly global society we will have to rely more and more on the authority, expertise, and good will of global decision-makers. If pollution knows no boundaries, then those individuals and institutions will track, monitor, regulate, and reduce pollution must also have a global reach in order to do their job. Fortunately, there exists an excellent model of such global environmental decision-making at work: the 1987 Montreal Protocol for the Elimination of Ozone Depleting Substances. This unprecedented agreement, made possible by the United Nations, is believed to be the most successful example of international environmental decision-making on record and the first truly global treaty of any kind. Penelope Canan and Nancy Reichman argue that the Protocol was the product of several factors, including intense diplomacy, science advocacy, and informal relationships among global consultants - a new occupation that appeared in the late twentieth century policy circles. Based on years of field work, surveys, interviews, and network analysis, the authors offer an unprecedented view of politics and science at work in a global space. Canan and Reichman provide excellent case studies of key individuals who comprised the leadership behind the Protocol, including the venerable former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, Mostafa K. Tolba. Adopting C. Wright Mills' framework of the intersection of biography, personality, and history, Canan and Reichman explain the position of these players in a larger drama that would link people, national governments, and corporations in a collaboration unlike any other. The various social networks that formed during the many years in which the Protocol was being devised allowed scientists the opportunity to develop deep friendships, trust and relationships that made it possible to bridge national and cultural divides that might ordinarily hinder global decision-making. Another key ingredient in this process was the resource base that allowed participants to travel to several international meetings each year, so that face-to-face meetings were possible. This, as much as the Montreal Protocol depended on creative politics and innovative science, without these deep social networks, 'communities of practice' and "communities of expertise", the treaty might never have been possible. Extending Bourdieu's analysis of social capital, the authors argue that these actors converted their social capital into what they term 'intellectual capital' - the ability to think creatively and recognise the complementary expertise of others. Canan and Reichman are careful to state that scientific expertise alone is insufficient to produce successful international treaties. They demonstrate that the Protocol participants went beyond the traditionally restrictive role of "objective" scientist and transformed themselves into science advocates. Despite the risks to their careers of engaging in advocacy, these individuals consciously pushed the science on ozone depletion into action. They were allowed the authority, autonomy, and independence from politicians to do their jobs, which ultimately led to decisions that have the force of the United Nations behind them. Having personally been involved in a number of multi-stakeholder environmental negotiations myself, it is surprising to me that scientists were allowed to do what they did. The authors' claim, that the work the scientists did was free of political influence, seems difficult to accept, but they support this point with strong evidence. But the science/politics theme also points to a broader concern. If, as these and other scholars believe, technical expertise and a culture of science are viewed as driving forces in our postindustrial society, this still leaves the unresolved questions of democratic decision-making. Given that expertise is by definition, not widely distributed among populations, how can we be assured that the appointed "experts" are acting in the best interests of the world's population and the environment? Who has the right to confer the authority of scientists, and exactly whom do the scientists serve? These individuals are appointed, not elected, and if the average world citizen is ill-equipped to evaluate their credentials and the policy problem they are attempting to tackle, then we have an inherent and thorny problem of trust and representation. The book raises other intriguing questions as well. For example, why did the Montreal Protocol work out so well when the Basel Convention, the Stockholm Convention, and many other international environmental agreements did not? What was so different about Montreal that other failed to see and learn from? For instance, it is interesting that representatives from industry dominated the Montreal Protocol process and this was seen as a positive phenomenon (because, after all, the implementation of harmful chemical phase-outs starts and ends with industry). However, in a host of other national and international environmental agreements, corporate influence - if not hegemony - has been viewed as the major barrier to success (after all, when corporations and their representatives are defining the agenda, they are understandably limiting the kinds of questions that can be asked and the breadth and depth of actions that are allowable). In those cases, fiscal capital seemed to prevent any other forms of capital (human, social, cultural, or intellectual) from having significant impact on negotiations. Future research on international agreements might draw on the Montreal Protocol and a number of other agreements to produce a rich, comparative analysis in order to shed some light on this crucial theoretical and policy question. Ozone Connections is an outstanding example of the kind of research that sociologists in the twenty-first century will be required to conduct - multidisciplinary, multimethodological, and collaborative approaches that capture social action from the micro to the global. This book will appeal to sociologists of all persuasions, and to students and policy-makers and anyone interested in models of international decision-making that really work. -- David N. Pellow, University of California-San Diego * <i>Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews</i> Volume 35 Number 1 (January 2004) *