Green or Greed? Framing Environmental Agreements in the International System

Environmental Agenda of Contemporary International Relations Green or greed? Framing environmental agreements in the international system

You can’t eat money. This was the ultimate conclusion of a Native American proverb that warned of the time humanity realizes its faults against the environment “only when the last tree is cut, the last river polluted and the last fish caught.” Yet, after more than 40 years since environmental advocacies flourished, the world is still confronted with various decades-old environmental issues like climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. States continue to experience environmental problems that inevitably transcend territorial boundaries, despite the enforcement of numerous international green agreements, lending substantial insights on the actual efficacy of these said instruments to solve environmental dilemmas. As the fate of the controversial Kyoto Protocol (KP) suggests, world leaders have yet to rally behind a single global environmental agenda that goes beyond national interests. In fact, KP starkly reminds of the predicaments posed by the collective action theory of the rationalist tradition, with the varying behavior of key state parties and its broad ramifications. Such instances resurrect the issues raised by Garret Hardin’s classic Tragedy of the Commons, which talks of the overuse and ultimate destruction of resources collectively owned in pursuit of individual, selfish interests. Evidently, the case of KP aptly illustrate the “tragedy” of how the world’s collective interests are neglected by international actors (not only states) in exchange of maximizing individual utility.

Environmental Agenda of Contemporary International Relations Amidst the glaring manifestations of the severe impacts of environmental degradation against lives and livelihood, the world remains divided among multipolar interests; the global environment becoming foremost, an arena of political contention, rather than a point of unity...