policy responses to stratospheric ozone depletion

Policy responses to

A study of the collective regulation of chemicals which threaten the stratospheric ozone layer sheds light on the questions of how states recognize problems which had not previously been clearly indicated, the politics of actual standard setting, and the role of scientific understanding. Costly choices have been made without absolute scientific confirmation of environmental risk. This process was driven by the interplay of three interrelated sets of forces: knowledge, international politics, and technological innovation. Each may be necessary but insufficient to explain the outcome. Key in this case has been the role of an ecological epistemic community - a knowledge-based transnational network of specialists - whose members shared common views about the causes of the phenomenon and the policies which should be taken to manage it. This group was largely responsible for identifying and popular- izing the problem’s existence, and for selecting policy choices for its management.

The author is Assistant Professor, Depart- ment of Political Science, Thompson Hall, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.

In addition to secondary social science literature, this article is based on over 30 interviews with key ozone policy makers in the USA, the UK, France, and in the United Nations Environment Programme. The interviews were conducted from 1988 to 1990. An earlier version of the article was prepared for the National Academy of Sci- ences Committee on the Human Dimen- sions of Global Change.

stratospheric ozone depletion

Peter M. Haas

‘How full is a bucket of indeterminate size, with unknown capacity and a questionable number of leaks, that is being refilled at an unknown rate and which you cannot easily see?”

The collective management of shared environmental resources occurs through the interplay of technology, knowledge and politics. A full understanding of the dynamics by which responses to global environmental change occur requires a study of each of these three interdepen- dent strands, or forces in the world. That interplay, and its impact on collective efforts to protect stratospheric ozone, is analysed in this article.*

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are a family of chemical compounds containing chlorine, fluorine, and carbon. They were discovered by General Motors in 1931, and became widely used because they are inert, non-toxic, non-carcinogenic, and non-flammable. Global production quadrupled during the 196Os, peaking in 1974 at 812 million pounds. Present uses of CFCs include the following applications: as a coolant in commercial and residential refrigeration and air conditioning (CFCs 11 and 12), as well as mobile air conditioning (CFC 12); as a blowing agent in the production of plastic foam and foam insulation (CFCs 11 and 12); in solvents for cleaning metal and electronic parts (CFC 113); as aerosol propellants (CFCs 11 and 12); and for fire extinguishing (halons). CFCs are principally consumed in the industrial- ized countries, although demand is growing in less-developed countries (LDCs).

CFCs are produced by only 17 companies, with operations in 16 countries. In 1986, about 3 billion pounds were produced: 35% in the USA, 36% in Western Europe, 8% in the USSR and Eastern Europe, 3% in Latin America, and 18% in Asia and the Pacific.” With 50% of the US market, and with subsidiaries and joint ventures in six other countries, Du Pont is responsible for more than 25% of global production and is the only company to produce CFCs for the three major world

“Stratosfears’, The Economist, 25 Febru- markets: North America, Europe, and Japan.

aty 1989, p 79 More profound causes of stratospheric ozone depletion can be located

continued on page 225 in broader patterns of social behaviour and demographic trends, which

224 0959-3780/91/030224-l 1 0 1991 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd

continued from page 224 ‘While there is a large and growing volume of policy and scientific literature on this subject, there is still very little material available on the politics by which international agreement was reached on the ozone issue. Notable exceptions include David Doniger, ‘Politics of the ozone layer’, Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 1988; Peter H. Sand, ‘Protecting the environment’, Environment, Vol 27, No 5, June 1985; Richard Elliot Benedick, ‘Ozone diplomacy’, Issues in Science and Technology, Vol VI, No 1, Fall 1989, pp 43-50; Richard Elliot Benedick, ‘The ozone protocol: a new global diplomacy’, Conservation Foundation Letter, No 4, 1989; Richard Elliot Benedick, Ozone Di- plomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991. 3New York Times, 3 March 1989, p 1.

Stratospheric ozone depletion

created a growing need for such chemicals. CFC use has been driven largely by extensive consumer demands for the products in which it was used: principally refrigeration, cooling and insulation throughout the 1970s. The highest rates of population growth occurred in some of the hottest areas of the world. In the USA, the Sun Belt accounted for the highest rates of economic growth. Recently such demographic forces have been supplemented by advances in telecommunications, as computer usage in the 1980s increased the demand for CFCs as solvents in the

construction of boards and chips. Thus, in part the very structures of modern life, the mobility of

people, and the possibility of supporting large populations in relatively inhospitable climates have created the demand for chemicals whose use has proved threatening to the environment. Depleted stratospheric ozone is the collatoral damage of industrial society.

Deeper factors involving the way in which such problems are collec- tively treated relate to the structure of the international political system. The persistence of anarchy - an international political order without superordinate authority - means that collective goods such as the ozone layer will be heavily exploited, that international cooperation is necessary for their management, and that, ceteris par&us, leaders will be loathe to enter into binding arrangements to deal with phenomena whose effects are felt outside their areas of national control, such as the stratosphere.

Recognition of CFC use as a problem

Until the early 1970s there was no problem. CFCs were widely regarded as a perfect chemical because of their non-lethal properties and ease of handling.

Concern about the depletion of the ozone layer first emerged in the USA in 1970, when scientists on the President’s Science Advisory Council (PSAC) voiced fears that supersonic transports (SSTs) could destroy up to 50% of the earth’s ozone layer. With the demise of widespread SST use, this concern was put to rest. In 1974 chemists Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina at the University of California at Irvine calculated that chlorine in CFC emissions rising into the stratosphere could upset the natural ozone balance by reacting with and breaking down ozone molecules, hence depleting the thin layer of stratospheric ozone which filters ultraviolet rays from reaching Earth. Earlier publications had related chlorine to ozone depletion, but had not investigated the origins of stratospheric chlorine. Because CFCs have long residence times in the stratosphere, ozone depletion would be largely irreversible. It was later determined that, in order to freeze current levels of ozone depletion, an immediate cut of 85% in use would be necessary. Ozone depletion was regarded as a global problem, as most people would suffer from it, and most people contributed to it by using CFCs.

The scientific community was split regarding the acceptance of such a

hypothesis. Modelling efforts became more sophisticated over the next ten years, but the Rowland-Molina hypothesis was not confirmed until much later. The more refined models also yielded more conservative estimates of ozone depletion, reducing public concern about the phenomenon.

One group, constituting an ‘epistemic community’ accepted the

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE June 1991

Stratospheric ozone depleriorz

%ee Peter M. Haas, Saving the Mediterra- nean: The Politics of International Environ- mental Cooperation, Columbia University Press, New York NY, 1990, pp 52-63. While some entrepreneurial scientists may be members of an epistemic community, not all members of epistemic communities are equally publicly active, and they retain their commitments to professional truth tests and conducts. Many entrepreneurial scientists compromise their professional commitments to truth tests and validation in order to pursue their normative agen- das. Similarly, these commitments disting- uish them from groups like those analysed by Douglas and Wildavsky which may use scientific arguments to justify instrumental- ly their challenge of the status quo and to gain entry to the political process. See Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1982. Finally, epistemic communities are distinct from the broader scientific community because of their shared value commitments. *Fluorocarbon Research Program Revi- sion No 27, Chemical Manufacturers Asso- ciation, June 1985, p 4.

hypothesis, developed models to elaborate it, and began monitoring for actual ozone depletion, as well as publicly supporting policies to ban CFCs. An epistemic community is a knowledge-based transnational network of specialists whose members share common views about the causes of a problem and the policies which should be adopted to manage it.” Such groups are defined by their shared beliefs in cause-and-effect relations, truth tests, underlying values, and a common policy enter- prise. This group of scientists shared causal beliefs which related stratospheric ozone depletion to the infusion of chlorine from CFC use, as well as a desire to protect the environment. Because of their environmental values, they advocated anticipatory action despite the range of uncertainties. The group, composed principally of atmospheric physicists and chemists, existed world-wide, although it was most heavily represented in the USA, where 80-90% of the world’s atmospheric science is conducted. Other members included the staff of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), especially the executive director, Mostapha Tolba, an Egyptian microbiologist, as well as distinguished scientists in the UK and the FRG. High-level officials in the US government (the Department of State and the Environmental Protection Agency) shared interests with this ‘group, although they lacked the scientific training.

Ultimately, as these individuals and their allies gained authority in their various countries, they shifted behaviour in their countries. To

some extent this was through a combination of persuasion and political usurping of bureaucratic decision making. In the USA, it was a combination of the two (some officials sympathetic to the modelling mode of understanding were convinced by such arguments, others were outmanoeuvred); in the UK and the FRG it was a combination of persuasion and other circumstances. In either case, without the role of the epistemic community, especially in the USA where it identified state interests, the collective outcome would have been delayed and much weaker.

The rest of the broader scientific community disputed the hypothesis, doubting the existence of ozone depletion without actual observations, questioning the computer models which related CFCs to possible ozone depletion, and suggesting alternative hypotheses, as monitoring gradually revealed ozone depletion. The Chemical Manufacturers Associa- tion - an industry trade group - funded research to evaluate the Rowland-Molina hypothesis to the tune of $18.9 million from 1972 to

198s.5 Although the Rowland-Molina hypothesis remained unconfirmed, it

captured popular attention, and the USA and eight other countries banned the use of CFCs as aerosol propellants. Many European governments passed voluntary limits on aerosols, and the EEC placed a cap on production capacity in 1980. With the existing.voluntary bans on aerosols, this cap effectively built in a surplus capacity of 30% for European CFC producers. Thereafter the EEC pushed for global consumption cuts, which allowed EEC producers the possibility of expanding their production to fit the new niches. UNEP began a series of assessments of the scientific aspects of the problem.

Following this initial spate of legislating, total CFC production fell in 1977 and levelled off until 1983. In the interim, additional applications were developed for CFCs, in particular the use of CFC 113 as a solvent for computer chip manufacture, and CFC 113’s share of total production

226 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE June 1991


more than doubled from 1975 to 1982. Concern was renewed with a resurgence in total CFC production in 1983 and 1984, led by spectacular

leaps in CFC 113 production. In 1985, Joe Farman of the British Antarctic Survey published an

article describing a rapid and unexpected thinning of the ozone layer over Antarctica during the Antarctic springtime, based upon a recal- culation of existing satellite data. An international effort was launched in 1986 to investigate the hole and determine its cause, by providing actual ground-level and stratospheric measurements to supplement ongoing modelling exercises. A number of competing hypotheses were offered to explain the thinning, only one of which blamed chlorine from CFCs. Compelling evidence which correlated chlorine to the thinning of the layer (a ‘smoking gun’) did not emerge until 1987, after the conclusion of global negotiations.

Interestingly, the Antarctic hole focused attention on the problem of ozone depletion, but the scientific and modelling efforts of the time were unable to explain the existence of the hole. The epistemic community was chary about the utility of the Antarctic discovery. The Antarctic hole certainly mobilized concern about the problem of ozone depletion, yet it could not be explained or predicted by using their global models. They successfully contended that the existence of the hole, and its subsequent growth, indicated how little the system was understood, and stressed the need for risk-averse action.

In 1986, the scientific controversy was abruptly truncated when Du Pont announced that it regarded CFCs as the likely candidates and accepted the need for some form of global regulation. Such a public statement in effect crippled the scientific argument against CFCs and left the ecological epistemic community as the only publicly acknow- ledged experts. Although internal scientific disputes between alternative hypotheses to explain the Antarctic hole and actual monitoring to confirm the global hypotheses did not occur until 1988, most policy makers either concluded from the Du Pont statement that scientific closure had occurred, or used it to reinforce their former anti-CFC positions.

Current and future policies

Politics in the USA was driven by the ecological epistemic community. Its members formulated US policy, and exercised US leadership and influence to compel other countries to accept their preferred international policies regulating CFCs.

Following the resurgence in CFC usage in the early 198Os, in May 1981 the UNEP Governing Council authorized UNEP to initiate discussions for a global convention on CFCs. After several years of deadlock, countries were barely able to adopt a weak framework treaty in 1985. Europe and the USA could not agree on the appropriate way in which to regulate CFCs: by production or consumption; by all uses or by selected applications; through cuts (preferred by the USA); or merely through a freeze in use, as preferred by the EEC.

Committed to developing a stringent treaty, UNEP organized a number of scientific briefings during 1986 to overcome political opposition and resumed negotiations on a specific protocol replete with emission standards in December 1986. These negotiations led to the conclusion of the Montreal Protocol in September 1987, which estab-

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE June 1991 227


lished a schedule for a phased 50% reduction in consumption and production of CFCs by 1999. The treaty was unique in that it banned CFCs before it was clear that there were commercial alternatives available.

The rapid adoption of the Montreal Protocol was the consequence of extensive pressure applied by the USA at international negotiations. Later, with growing scientific consensus, movements for control accelerated and were driven by such scientific findings. In mid-1986 a new, more stringent US position was formulated in interagency discussions between the EPA Office of International Activities and the State Department’s Bureau of Oceans, Environment, and International Sci- ence (OES). Following recent personnel replacements in the Reagan administration, both these bodies were staffed by individuals sympathetic and responsive to the epistemic community. In fact, the bulk of their scientific advice came from members of the epistemic community.

The EPA and OES formulated the US position, calling for 95% cuts in the production of a wide variety of CFCs, and ultimately calling for their elimination. After winning an administrative policy.review battle throughout most of early 1987, the preferred policy of these agencies received the endorsement of President Reagan in June 1987, which they took to the international meetings. The US delegation was also led by this group.

At international meetings throughout 1987 they propelled other countries to accept the more stringent US position. By threatening to act unilaterally, in response to Congressional initiatives and lawsuits introduced by environmental groups, the USA threatened to curtail access to the world’s largest market for CFCs. It was thus the threat of US muscle - politics - which compelled many other countries to accept the US position which had already been formulated in response to the epistemic community’s articulation of scientific consensus. Gradually evolving scientific consensus subsequently reinforced the US bargaining position, although such consensus did not finally emerge until after the conclusion of the Montreal conference.

Although prevailing in the areas of key concern to it - the variety of CFCs to control and obtaining at least a 50% cut-the USA did have to make some compromises to generate agreement. A complicated form- ula was adopted combining the following elements: the European preference for consumption controls rather than production; the phasing-out of the cuts over time; allowing the USSR to complete construction of a CFC plant; permitting shifts in use between CFCs (to buy out Japan); and a ten-year exemption from compliance for the LDCs. Although covering only bulk chemicals, the treaty provides for future annexes for products made with, and containing, CFCs. The treaty also calls for ongoing scientific reassessment, to determine whether stratospheric changes require modifications in the treaty’s arrangements.

The Montreal Protocol entered into force on 1 January 1989, but it was shortly overtaken by accelerating scientific consensus. Ozone depletion reached a historic high in 1987, and in March 1988 a new multinational Ozone Trends Report was released in the USA, which finally presented findings from Antarctica relating CFCs to ozone depletion. The report triggered extensive alarm and calls for more stringent additions to the Protocol. Du Pont responded within a week by announcing its intention to discontinue CFC production by the end of


‘For comparative studies of science policy, and patterns of technical advice to policy makers, see Marshall Brickman, Sheila Jasanoff, and Thomas Ilgen, Controlling Chemicals, Cornell University Press, Itha- ca, NY, 1985; David Vogel, National SW/es of Regulation, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1986; Sheila Jasanoff, Risk Management and Political Culture, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, NY, 1986; and Thomas M. Dietz and Robert W. Ry- croft, The Risk Professionals, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, NY, 1987.


the century. In September, EPA administrator Lee Thomas called for absolute elimination of CFCs. In November, the UK called for 85% cuts. In February 1989, evidence from the recent Antarctic expedition

demonstrated that the ozone was again being depleted more rapidly than originally predicted. In early March 1989, European Community environmental ministers called for full elimination as soon as possible, and in the following week 123 countries called for absolute elimination by the end of the century. At the first governmental review meeting of the Montreal Protocol in May 1989, 81 countries adopted a resolution agreeing to phase out all production and consumption of CFCs by the year 2000, as well as to establish a fund of unspecified size to ameliorate the costs of adjustment for LDCs.

At the second governmental review meeting in June 1990, the Montreal Protocol was significantly amended and strengthened. Two new substances were added to the list of banned chemicals: carbon tetrachloride, to be phased out by the year 2000, and methyl chloro- form, to be eliminated by 2005. CFC production and use would be cut by 20% by 1993, 50% by 1995, and 100% by the year 2000. LDCs retained their lo-year extension. A $160 million fund was established, to be administered jointly by UNEP, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the World Bank, to provide financial assistance to LDCs for developing and acquiring CFC substitutes. An additional $40 million is to be added for India and the PRC when each country ratifies the Montreal Protocol, leading to an eventual total of $240 million. India and the PRC both have ambitious plans to expand their use of CFCs: earlier they had protested strongly that their development plans were being jeopardized by international environmental protection efforts. The additional money is still unlikely to be adequate to compensate each country for its additional costs for CFC substitutes.

Variation in policy responses

Countries responded to the ozone threat at different rates. The first group of countries to encourage global controls actively were those in which the epistemic community was strongest: the USA, Canada, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Other countries came to support more stringent efforts as the members of the epistemic community gained influence in them. As the members of that community consolidated their bureaucratic control, they also became influential in the enforce- ment of CFC policies.

The overall lag between European and US responses may be due to differences in political, cultural and social relations between the scientific community and government on the two continents. The highly fragmented nature of US government and society facilitates access of a strongly motivated group of technical experts. With fewer entry points, smaller scientific communities, a less accepted role for policy service, and a less antagonistic, contentious and controversial set of relations, it takes much longer for scientists to be heard in Europe.6 The more confrontational atmosphere in the USA facilitates early entry for epistemic communities into the policy-making process. In Europe, with better relations between science and the government, a less autonomous role for ‘public science’, and more bureaucratically secure policy makers, it takes much longer for such non-state actors to gain access. US regulators often have a ‘preference for rigorous quantitative


analysis” which is similar to the approach with which many scientists are comfortable, unlike their European counterparts with less stringent methodological predispositions. In the UK, with its traditional mode of negotiated solutions. the style of scientists is much more moderate. Overall, the size and mobility of such groups of specialists is much weaker in Europe than in the USA.

However, this difference in domestic structure merely means that epistemic communities were forced to operate through different loci of decision making in different countries, that they had to pursue different styles in the conduct of their dialogue, and that it took longer for them to have an effect. Despite these differences in process in different countries, the outcomes proved similar.

This lag is most observable in the UK, one of the last countries to support the Montreal Protocol. Scientific consensus did not emerge in the UK until the summer of 198X. The then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, had distrusted the Ozone Trends Panel’s findings, suspecting that they were biased toward US interests due to the strong role of NASA in its formulation, and that they exaggerated the rate of depletion and risks. She demanded rigorous proof of the existence of the ozone hole and its cause from UK scientists whom she respected. She then reconvened her own Stratospheric Ozone Review Group (SORG). Its first report, in August 1987, had downplayed the extent of the ozone threat and the role of CFCs. By and large, the SORG membership was independent of US links, although Joe Farman, who had ‘discovered’ the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985 and was a member of the ecological epistemic community, was a member and had publicly dismissed the findings of the earlier panels as based on out-of-date science.

Mrs Thatcher delayed any domestic action while awaiting the findings of the SORG. It published its executive summary in June 1988, and its final report in October, supporting and confirming the findings of the Ozone Trends Panel. The House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities, responding to a preliminary version of the report, announced in July that it accepted that CFCs were responsible and called for an extension of the Montreal Protocol to cut CFC use by 85%. The real turnaround came at the end of September. when Mrs Thatcher, in a speech to the Royal Society, called for immediate emergency action to safeguard the ozone layer, fight acid rain, and delay global warming, stating that ‘protecting the balance of nature [was] one of the great challenges of the late 20th century’.” Shortly afterwards she invited countries to attend an ozone conference in London, held in early March 1989, called for the 85% cut of CFCs, and restored funding, along with a slight increase, to the Antarctic Survey in

the budget. The UK shift to support CFC controls may be the result of multiple

convergent factors. Domestic advice from scientists whom Mrs Thatcher trusted may well have been a strong step. The timing is certainly suggestive. Before the SORG’s second findings, the UK position had been essentially driven by the Department of Trade and Industry, which was oriented towards protecting England’s sole CFC producer, ICI. Additional factors reinforced the pressure from UK scientists. Just

‘Jasanoff, op tit, Ref 6. before her speech to the Royal Academy, Mrs Thatcher had received

‘Geoffrey Lean, ‘Tories plan “Green Bill” ‘, papers warning of global warming (not ozone depletion) provided by

London Observer, 2 October 1988, p 1. the UK ambassador to the UN. Sir Crispin Tickell, himself a long-


“The greening of Margaret Thatcher’, The Economist, 11 March 1989, pp 55-56; Geoffrey Lean, ‘Ozone: UN acts to tighten controls’, London Observer, 5 March 1989,

P 2. “interview at French Environment Minis- try, October 1989; and Richard Elliot Benedick, Ozone Diplomacy, Harvard University Press. Cambridae. MA. USA. 1991. For a list of French research, see ta Protection de la Couche d’ozone, Secre- tariat d’Etat a I’Environment, Paris (pack- et), 1989. “House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities, The Ozone Layer - lmplemenfing the Montreal Pro- tocol, Session 1987-88, 17th Report, HL Paper 94, HMSO, London, 1988.


standing Thatcher confidant and one interested in climatic issues.” Domestic politics may have played a role as well. Mrs Thatcher’s speech came a week before the annual congress of the Labour Party, the main opposition party in the UK. The environment had suddenly become a salient topic domestically during the summer, with the widely publicized deaths of North Sea seals (from unclear causes) and the refusal of the UK authorities to allow the toxic waste loaded cargo ship Karin B to enter the UK. Mrs Thatcher’s personality may have been a factor too. With university chemistry training, she may have been singularly responsive to advice couched in such terms as ‘as a scientist, Prime- Minister, you will appreciate

Private sector response

Despite initial strong opposition, the CFC industry has come to support controls. Notable was the 1986 Du Pont announcement that it suddenly accepted the need for controls, and the 1958 decision to discontinue production. Du Pont was the first to follow up on the Ozone Trends Panel’s findings, announcing a week after the Panel’s conclusions that it would eliminate production by the end of the century. From 1980 to 1986 Du Pont had fed industry opposition to controls. Although certainly hoping to gain an edge in the market for CFC alternatives. the Du Pont decision was also made by scientists working in the research wing of the Freon (CFC) products division. They had developed and run their own models, convinced themselves of the scientific legitimacy of the Rowland-Molina hypothesis, drafted the 1986 statement and en- couraged top-level management to accept the 1988 Ozone Trends Panel conclusions.

As the largest firm in the market, Du Pont’s decision forced other CFC manufacturers to follow suit or risk losing market share. Since 1988 the producers have been involved in extensive research and design to develop alternatives for CFCs. A number are currently under review, although none have yet completed thorough toxicity testing.

In general, non-governmental organizations and public movements had little direct impact on the regulation of CFCs. Public activity generally occurred in the aftermath of the Montreal Protocol, and it simply accelerated the movement which had already been put in place, In the UK, for instance, Friends of the Earth launched an extensive campaign in late 1987 aimed at reducing aerosol use. In the USA municipal initiatives against CFCs caught on only after the Montreal


Struiospheric uzone depferion

Protocol was signed. To the extent that industrial responses accelerated the process of market adaptation, the market signals came from policy makers, although they were reinforced by public opinion. Mounting public concern and the threat of federal regulation also fed to CFC- consuming industrial groups (such as packaging firms and those using CFCs in the manufacture of insulation materials and as aerosol propellants in Europe) to announce publicly that they would no longer use such materials, and further to pressure the manufacturers to offer substitutes. The extent to which the Montreal Protocol is successful now largely depends on whether successful substitutes are developed.

Future politics revolve around two points. One is the extension of the Montreal Protocol to cover a variety of other ozone-depleting chemicals. To date, scientific certainty has fagged slightly behind political actions. If subsequent scientific studies should in some way suggest these actions were inappropriate, the entire political process might be undermined, but this seems unlikely. The second point relates to the role of LDCs in international efforts to protect the ozone layer. To date, they have had only a slight presence, and only 20 LDCs have yet ratified the Montreal Protocol (of the 29 LDCs that had signed the Protocol) - in part because few LDCs are major consumers of CFCs, and in part because they fear the costs of compliance.

Assessment

The management of CFCs was marked by the interplay between politics, knowledge and technology. Politics involved the exercise of political muscle by the USA in international diplomacy. The USA drove other countries to accept a stronger treaty through the application of politics. Whereas US diplomatic leadership explains the international outcome. the domestic side of the story is necessary to understand the end to which such muscle was directed. In turn, the treaty, combined with subsequent scientific furor, forced national policy changes and the pursuit of new technoIogies,

K~zo~ie~~~ relates to technical consensus or understanding about important cause-and-effect relationships which affect humanity. Know- ledge, as articulated by one group, was important for focusing international attention on the problem, proposing specific policies, and enforc- ing them in the countries in which their advocates were most strongly entrenched. Although knowledge identified the range of policies which would be considered, the actual decisions and compromises were based upon different parties’ political abilities to promote their own inter- pretation of prevailing understanding. Thus, this outcome was largely a result of the knowledge of one particular group - the ecological epistemic community - which mattered. rather than the influence of knowledge (or collective understanding) acting by itself as an independent variable.

Technology facifitatecf the conclusion of agreement, because afterna- tives appeared available. However, technology in this regard is not an autonomous category, but one responsive to political cues and condi- tions created by politics and knowledge, which in turn give rise to specific policies, such as tax incentives. Industrial research and development (R&D) in CFC substitutes had virtually disappeared in the early 1980s, with the promised ‘regulatory relief’ of the Reagan administration. Renewed R&D in substitutes only occurred in response to the



technology-forcing signals inherent in an international policy which required 50% cuts in CFC uses - cuts which could not effectively be met through conservation or existing alternatives.

This multivariate explanation of stratospheric ozone protection dif- fers from two of the more widely cited analyses of the issue. Richard Benedick12 relates the successful outcome largely to creative bargaining. While this was surely a significant factor accounting for the regime’s success, without the existence of knowledge to establish the authorita- tive boundaries of discussions and to bolster the preferred position of the USA (and UNEP), bargaining alone would have been inadequate to generate a successful and satisfactory outcome. Peter Morrisette” has analysed the same process, largely in terms of evolving policy awareness about costs and benefits and available alternative policies spawned by technological change. Again, this analysis omits the key role of political power, and the ability of the USA to compel other countries to accept outcomes which would entail real short-term costs for their industries.

The control of CFCs may be virtually a sui generis event in the annals of global environmental change. Change in the global physical system was managed without corresponding changes in the social dynamics which gave rise to physical changes. To some extent this issue did not involve any hard choices. A technical fix proved feasible. Replacing CFCs with substitutes and through conservation may actually be effec- tive for protecting the natural environment.

The ozone problem is only loosely coupled with other issues (unlike, for instance, climate change) so that discrete policy making independent of functional linkages to other issues (and political disagreements) was possible. To the extent that linkages have been identified, ozone is but one of several greenhouse gases, so its protection contributes positively to broader efforts to control greenhouse gases and prevent global climate change.

The pollutant, politically and even economically, was not costly, and opposition was not widespread in society due to the few personal adjustments which it would be necessary to make. Moreover, industry was not heavily reliant on the production of CFCs: for example, CFCs accounted for 2% of Du Pont’s revenues in 1987, and a slightly higher percentage of profits. Industrial users were mollified with the promise of substitutes.

Some of the collateral damage of modernity was treated without significantly altering the underlying forces which generated the problems. Countries were able to counteract the consequences of prior human choice without changing the more fundamental modern industrial consumption and production urges which give rise to the desire for cooling and warmth. Current debates about making such materials available to LDCs rather than changing needs for such substances clearly articulate this argument. Moreover, virtually no change in consumer preferences has occurred. Even recent efforts at ‘environmen- tally friendly’ products are in the realm of aerosols and packaging materials, not the more extensive uses for cooling. Collective responses were also generated in an international political context of national sovereignty, although the congruent influence of non-state epistemic

“Benedick, op tit, Ref 10. 13Peter M. Morrisette, ‘The evolution of

actors may undercut the validity of such a concept in actual practice.

policy responses to stratospheric ozone Despite broader criticisms of incremental decision making and ad hoc

depletion’, Natural Resources Journal, Vol treatment of environmental problems which are presumed to be ineluct-

29, Summer 1989, pp 7934320 ably interlinked, in this instance they may have worked. Without


Strukxpheric ozone depletiorr

altering consumer preferences for cooling (indeed recognizing the legitimacy of such concerns by the LDCs) the participating countries managed to devise a technical fix which promoted less damaging alternatives, although it remains to be seen how well institutions work to provide such new substances to the LDCs. An instrumental, mechanical perspective continues to motivate collective decision making.

Still, the most significant aspect of the Montreal Protocol and its aftermath may be the implications of a move to a more sophisticated form of collective rationality. Rather than instrumental rationality (in the Weberian sense) which views problems as discrete, isolated from

‘%chard E. Benedick, ‘Global environ- associated issues, and in a fairly short time horizon, the Montreal Ozone

mental change: the international perspec- Protocol calls for periodic scientific reappraisal of ozone depletion,

tive’, in Effects of Changes in Stratospher- possibly reflecting a new awareness that the future will not be like the ic Ozone and Global Climate, Volume 1: Overview, United States Environmental

present, and that change occurs rapidly. In sum, Mostafa Tolba

Protection Agency and United Nations En- described the Montreal Protocol as ‘the beginning of a new era of

vironment Programme, Washington, DC, environmental statesmanship’, and the US ambassador to the negotia-

August 1986, p 31. tions heralded it as ‘a new paradigm for international cooperation’.‘4


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