International environmental decisionmaking

Nations have increasingly had to decide whether to take action on international environmental issues. How do these nations decide whether to take action on these international environmental issues? Further, how do they decide what level of action to take? What influences a country to decide either to support action to study the issue further, reduce emissions, or go to the full step of phasing out those emissions causing the environmental effect? This study tries to take the initial step of answering these questions. In attempting to answer these questions, this study focused on how the 24 industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) made decisions on the following major international environmental issues of the 1990s: stratospheric ozone depletion, acid deposition, greenhouse warming, and transboundary movement of hazardous waste. Multiple regression analysis techniques were used to analyze the data. The results of this analysis indicate that the level to which a nation agrees to cooperate on an international issue depends on many factors: the scientific consensus as to the establishment of a cause/effect relationship between anthropogenic emissions and an environmental effect; the scientific assessment of the cost of mitigating emissions; the vulnerability of a nation to the environmental effect; the number of countries involved in the negotiations; the leadership of the United States and European Community; the presence of past agreements in subject area; the flexibility of agreement; the overall economic conditions of country; and the activity of a country's industry and environmental interest groups. As measured by the independent variables used in this analysis, scientific knowledge appears to have the greatest influence on the level of agreement on an environmental issue. Agreement characteristics and international politics are well behind scientific knowledge. National politics is last. The results of this analysis have major implications for theories of international environmental decisionmaking and for the practical implementation of action on those issues. Although the research, of course, has its limitations, it offers new insights into theoretical venues, opens up new research areas, and provides advice to those who actively work either to support or prevent agreement on these issues.