An Asian Perspective on a World Environmental Organization

Abstract

Transboundary and international environmental problems are a pressing concern for the global community and call for innovative institutional design to address them. Whereas the developed countries value the international environment highly they realize that some of the solutions must originate within the geographic boundaries of developing countries, including Asian Developing Countries (ADC). The ADC, on the other hand, do not appear to have these problems high on their agendas at least at first glance. More important appear to be economic growth and domestic environmental concerns. However, it is also true that not addressing global environmental problems could hurt, in specific areas, ADC economic growth and their domestic environmental problems. But, the fundamental fact of the indivisibility of the growth and environmental agendas in the ADC has to be faced. Since the developed countries seem to consider global environmental problems as an emergent issue and since ADC will soon become major contributors to this problem, it would be necessary to have the foresight to conclude a treaty at an early date. This would mean that ADC would have to be persuaded and provided enough incentives to enter into international environmental negotiations and remain committed to this process. The paper has argued that since ADC have considerable environmental assets, these countries should probably look for linking slowing down the depletion of these assets to other areas of linkage to the developed countries. In particular, this would include international trade, transfer of technology and, perhaps, direct transfers. Since this linkage would be very wide ranging, it would be necessary to exploit any positive external effects that might flow from some treaties and avoid duplication and conflicts in others. It makes sense, therefore, to have a World Environmental Organization (WEO) to coordinate these efforts. But what version of a WEO is to be opted for is, at this point in time, an open question. Clearly a mild version of a WEO that brings all environmental treaties under one umbrella, provides technical know-how and facilitates negotiations would be innocuous enough and, therefore, acceptable. However, such a WEO would also not be very effective in controlling the problem of global externalities, assuming that this problem is of an emergent nature. Stronger versions of a WEO would not be acceptable to ADC unless issue linkage of the sort discussed here becomes a reality. Before that is achieved, given the past experience of ADC with MEA, the WEO would have to build considerable credibility as an organization that is truly interested in global environmental problems, is sensitive to the needs of the ADC