The resolution of international environmental conflict is currently an important topic in international relations and on the foreign policy agenda. This project aims at analyzing trends in the actual ways in which such problems are managed, with an aim toward generating policy relevant conclusions for improving the process and theoretical and analytic insights into the dynamics of international environmental diplomacy to contribute to our broader understanding of contemporary international relations. The research will consist of a focussed, comparative study of six different cases of environmental cooperation. The analysis will weigh the role of the balance of state power and availability of expertise and knowledge in explaining the substantive content and preconditions for cooperation for environmental protection. It will use interviews and archival research to identify the major dynamics in these cases. The substantive coverage will include efforts to control European acid rain, the protection of the North Sea, Mediterranean, Baltic Sea, the protection of the stratospheric ozone layer, and the Regional Seas Programme of the United Nations Environment Programme which includes 10 separate regions. Taken together these cases represent the entire universe of contemporary international environmental problems: those which confront all countries relatively equally (such as ozone), and those which are regionally based. Moreover it focuses on a variety of cases in which there are strong countries willing to lead negotiations (such as the United States in ozone), where there is a large number of relatively equally powerful countries all reluctant to lead, in which case alternative strategies for cooperation have to be uncovered (such as the Regional Seas Program and the North Sea). Finally, it covers cases in which scientific understanding is fairly complete and demonstrates the need for action (such as the Baltic and North Sea) contrasted with cases where the scientific basis for policy was absent (such as the early years of European acid rain and ozone). By considering all these dimensions of cases, the research effort will seek to offer general statements about the role of state power and generalized knowledge in shaping and driving international environmental cooperation. The project will identify the major dynamics by which collective environmental problems are resolved, along with policy relevant advice on how to improve the process through a more sophisticated recognition of types of diplomacy and international process appropriate to the management of environmental problems with different analytic properties.
