Fisheries, sovereignties and red herrings.

• Author: Chadwick, Bruce P.
• Position: Transcending National Boundaries

In some circles, environmental issues are thought to be a completely new kettle of fish, requiring an entirely new way of thinking and organizing internationally. This is perhaps so, but they may ultimately prove an empty kettle of fish. U.S. salmon fishers off the Alaskan panhandle, for example, have recently fished so intensively that Canadian fishers in northern British Columbia claim stocks are insufficient to replenish supply. In protest Canadian fishers have mounted massive fleets on the Canadian side of the border to catch the Coho Salmon before they run back into the U.S. Straits of Juan de Fuca. The move has prompted negotiations and reminded both sides that the salmon is a common resource requiring care and trust between fishing parties if it is to be maintained. Although each country claims and respects the other's territorial sovereignty within internationally recognized boundaries, sovereignty alone does not solve the problem. Indeed, some might argue that sovereignty aggravates it.

Do environmental problems - particularly those of global scale - pose new challenges to the tradition of national sovereignty? Certainly there is ample reason for concern, as suggested by theoretical perspectives and historical events; however, this article shall argue that although the intellectual tradition of sovereignty presents some complications to international environmental resolutions, it need not prove fatal to them. Through agreements and negotiations, independent states can reach environmental accords without compromising their own sovereignty. Nevertheless, there are a number of qualifications to explore first, both to understand properly constituted sovereignty and to see why such sovereign states can cooperate rather than conflict over environmental issues. Ultimately this article will conclude that where states are democratic, environmental coordination and national sovereignty do not conflict. With sovereignty properly conceptualized and understood, one can begin to envisage how new actors on the international scene, in particular non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international organizations, can help to facilitate such cooperation without compromising the essence of sovereignty. All of these factors suggest serious adaptations that sovereign nation-states must address as they enter the next century - a challenge for all involved on a planetary scale.

This article takes the following forms: First, democratic states contain internal mechanisms which make them better able to represent the environmental interests of their citizens in the international realm and balance those interests against other benefits which may come from environmentally degrading activities. Second, because they are better able to "feel" the environmental conditions in their territories, democratic governments should be able to negotiate satisfactory environmental treaties rather than have standards enforced upon them by an international authority. At the same time, this article will argue that democratic states are those states to which the concept of sovereignty as autonomy applies with the most moral force. Democratic states should, therefore, be able to negotiate environmental treaties as well as have their mutual autonomy respected. In this way, environment and sovereignty need not stand in opposition.

The question is more complicated for non-democratic states. States lacking democratic processes tend systematically to underestimate the costs of environmental degradation relative to the benefits gained from degrading activities. As a result, environmental problems are likely to reach critical proportions before such states are willing to negotiate or act.(1) In addition, although there are historical precedents and geostrategic reasons for respecting the sovereignty of non-democratic states, their moral claim to sovereignty is less warranted, as these states do not effectively represent the interests of their citizens. Infringements on the sovereignty of these states represent a challenge to a small coterie of leaders, not an usurpation of a people's right to govern themselves. Some non-democratic nations do sign environmental treaties for political reasons, but the tension between environment and sovereignty may prove much stronger in non-democratic states.

The primary question in the debate between sovereignty and the environment is normative. It is not primarily about efficiency and effectiveness, although those factors may support one normative position or another. If the debate were solely about efficiency, the issue of "sovereignty" would not arise; rather, the question would address whether international, national or local governments protect environments better. This debate is about power and its just distribution in the face of a common threat to the earth's ecosystems. In short, who will make the rules which govern the quality of the environment we all live in?

The debate poses interesting questions because it counterposes two values held deeply by most people: to live in an environment that is stable, non-poisonous, abundant with the raw materials necessary to live and even aesthetically pleasing; and to respect the rights of others to make their own laws and live according to their own needs. This analysis resolves that tension by invoking a third value - democracy. By understanding democracy's relationship to sovereignty and the environment, the ethical dilemma can be substantially reduced.

In this article, I will first provide an explanation of the historical and theoretical reasons behind the perceived tension between sovereignty and the environment. Second, I will examine some minority viewpoints and suggest that cooperation without conflict is possible. Third, I will explore the relationship between democracy and the environment, emphasizing how democratic structures can create an information-feedback system that allows them to fit into the cooperative logic referred to above. This section will also describe why non-democratic systems face problems in evaluating their environmental situations accurately, thus interfering with the functioning of the cooperative logic. Fourth, I will briefly summarize two sources of the concept of sovereignty - international and domestic - and show why sovereignty ought to protect democratic states with significantly more force than non-democratic ones. Finally, I will conclude by demonstrating that the democratization of national and international realms, rather than a dismantling of national sovereignty, is the real basis for solving global environmental problems.

THE CHALLENGE TO SOVEREIGNTY

Concerns over the sanctity of national sovereignty arose almost as soon as environmental issues entered the international arena. At the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, the World Population Conference in 1974, the Earth Summit in 1992 and the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, the issue of sovereign rights figured prominently in discussions. States in the developing world voiced serious concerns over resolutions to preserve the environment, particularly those creating new international organizations, claiming that these would restrict the rights of states to use and control the resources in their territorial jurisdictions. In 1972, Brazil and India led the developing world in arguing for a "right to development," which states could use to counter international efforts at controlling environmental conditions. At the time, environment and development were conceptualized as irreconcilable opposites - a result of the Conference's emphasis on pollution abatement, whereby pollution was understood as an inescapable consequence of industrialization, and hence, development.

Since 1972, many recently decolonized nations feared that the move to create international environmental governance represented a new attempt by the former and other imperial powers to control domestic resources and policies from abroad. The recently democratized Brazilian government, was horrified when U.S. Senator Robert Kasten, echoing a view expressed by Francois Mitterand, "apparently suggested that the Amazon belonged not so much to Brazil as the world."(2) Such statements helped to create a desperate push to populate the Amazon region solely for the purpose of establishing clear sovereignty, and, as a result, deforestation rates increased. Even given suggestions that intervention would be based on U.N. mandated decisions, the common-knowledge power inequalities within the U.N. system which favor the industrialized countries cast serious doubt on the good intentions of international authorities. Countries of the North are hardly in a moral position to guide sovereignty abridgments based on environmental criteria, when one could argue that it is the North's excessive consumption that drives a majority of the world's current environmental ills.

Such concerns by developing nations should be understandable, given that in the wake of decolonization, juridical territorial sovereignty over the resources inside their territories was virtually all these impoverished countries had to claim. The struggle for political independence seldom left newly independent countries with significant control over their own economies, many of which were still dominated by private firms tied to their former imperial powers. Even in countries that escaped direct imperialist domination, such as China, or had freed themselves from immediate foreign control in the 19th century, as with virtually all of Latin America, deteriorating terms of trade and negligible international clout led these countries to "draw the line" at their own borders. In such situations, sovereignty remains an extremely sensitive issue, and measures which threaten to reduce a country's sphere of sovereign action can hardly be expected to gamer much domestic support.

Even in industrialized countries, the...