North-South Polarity in Inter-American Environmental Affairs

Abstract

Since the conclusion of the Earth Summit - or, more formally, the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) - in 1992, the world's political leaders have had to deal with an ambitious environmental agenda whose mission is nothing short of saving the biosphere, a spectacular quest that carries an equally impressive price tag. The acceleration of a global environmental agenda over the first part of the 1990s, combined with the accumulated commitments of earlier years - of which the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES), the Ivory Ban, and the Montreal Protocol, are among the most prominent - and the high profile assigned to the environment by the Clinton administration, mean that the December 1994 Hemispheric Summit in Miami will have the opportunity (and the challenge) to set a new environmental agenda.