Environmental problems are an example of international interdependence and often create collective goods problems for the states involved. The large numbers of actors involved in global environmental problems make them more difficult to solve.
To resolve such collective goods problems, states have used international regimes and IOs, and have in some cases extended state sovereignty (notably over territorial waters) to make management a national rather than an international matter.
International efforts to solve environmental problems aim to bring about sustainable economic development. This was the theme of the 1992 UN Earth Summit.
Global warming results from burning fossil fuels—the basis of industrial economies today. The industrialized states are much more responsible for the problem than are third world states. Solutions are difficult to reach because costs are substantial and dangers are somewhat distant and uncertain.
Damage to the earth’s ozone layer results from the use of specific chemicals, which are now being phased out under international agreements. Unlike global warming, the costs of solutions are much lower and the problem is better understood.
Many species are threatened with extinction due to loss of habitats such as rain forests. An international treaty on biodiversity and an agreement on forests aim to reduce the destruction of local ecosystems, with costs spread among states.
The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) establishes an ocean regime that puts most commercial fisheries and offshore oil under control of states as territorial waters. The United States signed the treaty after a decade’s delay.
Pollution—including acid rain, water and air pollution, and toxic and nuclear waste—tends to be more localized than global and has been addressed mainly through unilateral, bilateral, and regional measures rather than global ones.
The economies of the industrialized West depend on fossil fuels. Overall, these economies import energy resources, mostly oil, whereas the other world regions export them. Oil prices rose dramatically in the 1970s but declined in the 1980s as the world economy adjusted by increasing supply and reducing demand. After spiking around 1991 and again around 2000, prices dropped again. Such fluctuations undermine world economic stability.
The most important source of oil traded worldwide is the Persian Gulf area of the Middle East. Consequently, this area has long been a focal point of international political conflict, including the 1991 Gulf War.
States need other raw materials such as minerals, but no such materials have assumed the importance or political status of oil. Water resources are a growing source of local international conflicts, however.
War and other military activities cause considerable environmental damage—some times deliberately inflicted as part of a war strategy.
World population—now at 6.2 billion—will reach 7 to 8 billion within 25 years and may eventually level out around 9 to 10 billion. Virtually all of the increase will come in the global South.
Future world population growth will be largely driven by the demographic transition. Death rates have fallen throughout the world, but birthrates will fall proportionally only as per capita incomes go up. The faster the economies of poor states develop, the sooner their populations will level out.
The demographic transition sharpens disparities of wealth globally and locally. High per capita incomes and low population growth make rich states or groups richer, whereas low incomes and high population growth reinforce each other to keep poor states and groups poor.
Within the overall shape of the demographic transition, government policies can reduce birthrates somewhat at a given level of per capita income. Effective policies are those that improve access to birth control and raise the status of women in society. Actual policies vary, from China’s very strict rules on childbearing to pronatalist governments that encourage maximum birthrates and outlaw birth control.
Death rates are stable and little affected in the large picture by wars, famines, and other disasters. Raising the death rate is not a feasible way to limit population growth.
Although the global AIDS epidemic may not greatly slow world population growth, it will impose huge costs on many poor states in the coming years. Currently 40 million people are infected with HIV, and 30 million more have died. Most are in Africa, and new infections are growing rapidly in Asia and Russia.
AIDS demonstrates that growing international interdependence—the shrinking world—has costs and not just benefits. Because states cannot wall themselves off from the outside world, international cooperation in addition to unilateral state actions will be necessary to contain AIDS.
Population pressures do not cause, but do contribute to, a variety of international conflicts including ethnic conflicts, economic competition, and territorial disputes.
