CHARACTERIZATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

An international ecological conflict is at hand when actors representing at least two different nations have diverging positions on an environmental issue and at least one of them also takes action to protect or promote its interests in that connection.Aconflict between two or more countries does not exist in the absence of conflict performance even if, say, a scholarly analysis convincingly demonstrates that the parties involved have opposing inter­ests regarding an international environmental issue.

The negative consequences of an environ­mental issue are often highlighted because they include the distribution, or redistribution, of scarce and vital natural resources. For example, many analysts have pointed to Israel's shortage of water as a fundamental factor in the Israel-Syria peace negotiations. Twenty-five percent of Israel's water supply depends on access to the Golan Heights. This predicament helps explain why Israel, since its 1967 occupation of the Golan Heights, has claimed this territory as its own (NewYork Sun, 2007).

According to a UN Environmental Program report, ecological degradation and desertifica­tion influence conflict in Darfur. The Sudanese government's manipulation and appropriation of such scarce resources as land, water, and especially oil exacerbate conflict-inciting tensions. For example, in eastern Sudan, Khartoum diverted limited water from grazing land to commercial irrigation, leading to fighting in the region (New York Times, 2007).

Entirely natural phenomena like an erup­tion of a volcano may have disastrous consequences for the environment and the people living around it, such as the destruction of buildings and cultivated land.

In this chapter, no a priori distinction is made between dispute and conflict. The understanding of what a conflict represents is held very open within the constraints of the wide conflict definition used here. In a particular situation, the stakes of an ecological conflict may be relatively small but in some cases they may also be of extreme magnitude. Conflict intensity may be low, moderate, or very high. Conflicting parties may in some cases be satisfied to use normal and not particularly costly policy measures to have their way, but in other ecological conflicts, they may conceivably be willing to take substantial risks and mobilize huge resources for this purpose. Hence, it is a purely empirical question as to how intensive an ecological conflict may become and what instruments and power resources conflicting parties will rely on in order to try to have their way.

In several respects, ecological conflicts may have a great variation. The number of conflicting parties may differ dramatically with important consequences for conflict resolution. The differences between Denmark and Sweden concerning the Swedish nuclear power plant at Barseback are an example of an ecological conflict with minimum scope: a bilateral situation (Lofstedt, 1998). In contrast, the negotiation on climate change has a global scope with thousands of participants of different types; gov­ernments, non-governmental organizations, scientists, and business organizations, per­forming different roles.

Ecological conflicts: A basic typology

It is frequently hard to delimit an ecological conflict because its environmental issue component is linked to other issues. Desertifi­cation is allegedly associated with a number of severe and violent conflicts in the Third World. One may, however, argue that desertification as such, the geographical expansion of a desert, does not cause conflict among nations but that the effects of such a development may generate discord between individuals, tribes or nations. One contingency is that people are forced to leave their homes because their farmland or grazing areas are overrun by an expanding desert. Flows of refugees crossing national borders ultimately following from desertification may cause disturbances and sometimes inter-governmental conflict. Pollution in a river may be perceived by people because it is indicated by the color or the unpleasant odor of the water. These immediate manifestations of pollution in an inland waterway or lake are not likely to cause serious international conflict but diminished fresh water resources due to the deterioration of water quality may have such an effect.

Environmental damage is typically linked to loss of natural resources of such economic and social importance that it is prone to generate conflict amongst stakeholders. Consequently, numerous authors do not distinguish between ecological and resource conflicts. In their view, international eco­logical conflicts occur because they have distributional effects on the supply of scarce natural resources.

The degree to which the environmental component of an ecological conflict is linked to other contentious issues is important to note. From this point of view, it is meaningful to distinguish between three types of eco­logical conflict: “pure” ecological conflicts, embedded ecological conflicts, and embracing ecological conflicts.

“Pure” ecological conflicts are dominated by one particular environmental issue. Other issues may be involved but have a limited significance. An environmental issue in a “pure” ecological conflict tends to represent risk rather than crisis. Policy makers and other actors (e.g. diplomats) engaged in international conflict resolution activities do not have to address various associated acute problems like, for example, ethnic or religious confrontations, economic distribution issues or the effects of uncontrolled migration flows.

One example of a pure risk-driven envi­ronmental conflict is the dispute between Austria and the Czech Republic regarding the Czech nuclear power plant at Temelin not far from the Austrian border. The essence of this conflict is straightforward. Austria wants to have the Temelin nuclear plant closed down in order to avoid the risk of a nuclear accident, whereas the Czech Republic needs its production of electric power for both welfare and security reasons.

The stand of the Austrian government on the Temelin power plant was fully consistent with the general nuclear energy policy that had been developed in Austria in the 1970s. A 1978 referendum rejected the start of operation of a newly constructed nuclear power plant at Zwentendorf. As a result, the Austrian Parliament prohibited the use of nuclear energy in the country. The anti-nuclear opinion in Austria was further reinforced by the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and soon also targeted the Soviet type nuclear reactors under construction at Temelin in the Czech Republic only 100 kilometers from the Austrian border. The Czech government rejected the Austrian demand that the Temelin reactors should be closed and simply refused to engage themselves in formal negotiations on this topic.

However, in reality, the Czech government agreed to participate in an informal dialogue with the Austrians that was carried out at a medium political level with an important participation of technical experts.

The Temelin case exhibits important prop­erties of environmental issues representing a pure ecological conflict that are negotiated in the United Nations and other international institutions. In one sense, these “pure” environmental conflicts are not exceptional cases. The 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment (the Stockholm con­ference) initiated a political process which created a large constellation of separate international treaties, each of which refers to a very specific environmental issue like, for example, depletion of the ozone layer in the atmosphere. Disputes about the establishment of these accords represent examples of a “pure” ecological conflict. These confronta­tions have usually been peaceful: the parties involved have not found it instrumental to use military force in order to defend or promote their special interests. Rather, such violent resolution methods have hitherto been unthinkable in pure ecological conflicts.

A second category is embedded ecological conflicts. Many disputed environmental issues are strongly linked to other topics that are addressed in a process of conflict resolution. Pollution in a river, say, the Jordan, the Nile or the Rhine, or an international lake like the Caspian Sea, is a good case of illustration. In these cases, the authorities in riparian states have been concerned with water pollution but have embedded this problem in a larger agenda including an alignment of important issues such as natural resources (fish), national security, human health, and transportation of goods and people.

In embedded ecological conflicts, the impact of the environmental issue is hard to determine and assess.

An embracing ecological conflict also encompasses other topics than an environ­mental issue. However, in contrast to an embedded ecological conflict, the environ­mental issue dominates and embraces the other issues. The UN negotiations on climate change illustrate this contingency. These talks have a clear focus on the climate issue which has been carefully constructed in the process. The climate issue is, in turn, a row of other issue areas representing either sources or effects of climate warming, e.g. energy, land use, industrial production, and transportation.

Institutionalization of environmental issues into permanent issue areas has by now become a permanent feature. Most environmental issues have attained their institutionalized form in the period after the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and have been defined in an international treaty that has usually been developed stepwise by means of recursive negotiation.

There are hundreds of bilateral, regional and global international environmental treaties, many of which are considerably institutionalized (MacCaffrey, et al. 1998). Table 12.1 below gives examples of treaties and international regimes containing institutionalized issue definitions (Mitchell, 2003). The table gives some idea of the varied character of the institutionalized system of environmental issues that has been established in the last few decades such as hazardous waste, biological diversity, depletion of the ozone layer, or long-range air pollution in a particular geographical region.

Table 12.1 also recalls that some envi­ronmental issue areas have a global reach whereas others pertain to a relatively small group of nations. Quite different types of environmental problems are covered by the conventions referred to in Table 12.1 which reflects the existing high degree of fragmen­tation of the overall environmental policy area. In the period after the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, issue fragmentation has in different ways facilitated the resolution of environmental conflicts, especially when it addresses institutionalized issues and unfolds in an international institu­tion like an organization in the United Nations family.

The system of fragmented issue areas contributes to facilitate the resolution of ecological conflicts in at least three ways:

(i) issue complexity has been reduced to an acceptable level because each individual issue has been narrowly delimited;

(ii) the norms and consensual knowledge in which the environmental issue definitions are embedded give authoritative guidance to regime building and conflict resolution. For example, if an authoritative definition and description states that an ecological problem area state is due to emissions of certain hazardous emissions, then it is implied that these emissions should be phased out;

Table 12.1 Selected international environmental agreements including institutionalized issue definitions

• "Basel Convention" - Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal

• "CBD" - Convention on Biological Diversity

• " CCAMLR" - Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources

• "CCSBT" - Convention forthe Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna

• "CITES" - Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora

• "CLC" - Convention on Civil Liabilityfor Oil Pollution Damage

• "FCCC" - United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

• "LRTAP" - Geneva Convention on Long-Range TransboundaryAir Pollution

• "Montreal Protocol" - Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer

• "OSPAR Convention" - Convention forthe Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-EastAtlantic

• "Paris Convention" - Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy

• "Stockholm Convention" - Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants

• "UNCCD" - United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification

• "UNCLOS" - United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

• "UNFCCC" - United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

• "Vienna Convention" - Convention forthe Protection of the Ozone Layer

• "Wetlands Convention" - Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat.

(iii) The fragmented issue structure has created a considerable number of acknowledged focal points for international negotiation.

International ecological conflicts may also concern a multitude of topics (Mitchell, 2003). There are considerable dissimilarities between issues like, say, hazardous waste, biodiversity or climate change. Nevertheless, this chapter argues that environmental issues tend to share a number of general features contributing to condition how an ecological conflict emerges, develops and is likely to be resolved.

Issue impact on conflict resolution:

A general outlook

Different issues can be expected to have a dissimilar impact on conflicts and conflict resolution when their general and typical char­acteristics diverge. For example, a contentious territorial issue is likely to drive conflicting parties in another direction than a problematic trade issue concerning non-tariff barriers in the World Trade Organization, WTO. There are numerous cases where governments have responded with military force in a territorial conflict, an option which is not likely to be used in a conflict about trade liberalization.

The parties to an ecological conflict are concerned with the values underlying the environmental issue, for example, those of access to fresh water in a conflict concern­ing water pollution. Obviously, it makes a difference if the values at stake are of great or moderate significance. The greater the magnitude of the values at stake, the more energy and resources is a government, or any other type of actor involved, willing to invest in action meant to defend its interests in the conflict.

However, other generalized issue proper­ties than values may also affect ecological conflict resolution, although in different ways. The degree of distributiveness of the stakes related to a particular issue is a case in point. Jerusalem as an issue in the Middle East negotiations is a well-known illustration of the problem of non-distributive issue.¹ The fact that conflicting parties have considered Jerusalem to be an indivisible value has sig­nificantly impeded Middle East peace nego­tiations (Albin, 1997). Thus, the very small degree of distributiveness of the Jerusalem issue has represented a serious obstacle for a productive exchange of concessions and compromises. In contrast, the high degree of distributiveness characterizing the tariff issue has been a significant facilitating factor in the international trade talks under GATT and in WTO (Kremenyuk & Sjostedt, 2000). From a technical negotiation point of view, bargaining on detail for a final tariff agreement has been uncomplicated. Negotiation parties have been able to make offers and requests with great precision.

Non-tariff barriers to trade (NTBs), which cannot easily be quantified, have been much more difficult to cope with. “Tariffication” has sometimes been used as a method of attaining a higher degree of distributiveness of this issue. The estimated protection effect of an NTB has been transformed into a tariff which has thereafter been put on the negotiation table.

Environmental issues share a number of other general features at the side of the degree of distributiveness that tend to color an ecological conflict and the way it is addressed and handled by the parties involved when they try to cope with it:

(1) Their special trans-boundary character;

(2) Their high issue complexity;

(3) Their tendency to draw in a complex combina­tion of participants;

(4) Their distribution of negative rather than positive values;

(5) Their special uncertainty problems;

(6) Their propensity to be framed as either crisis or risk;

(7) Their propensity to become securitized;

(1) Their trans-boundary character is the fundamental reason why environmental issues generate ecological conflicts involving two or more countries. An environmental issue is trans-boundary and potentially contentious because it concerns more than one country, but to a different degree, in different ways and for different reasons. For example, air pollutants may harm a number of nations other than the country emitting them. Therefore, the scope of nations' involvement in an environmental issue may vary from a bilateral situation to global engagement. For example, the possibil­ity that an accident may happen in the Swedish nuclear plant at Barseback is not immediately a world issue, but is considered to represent an unacceptable environmental risk in the Danish capital Copenhagen which is situated only a few miles away (Lofstedt, 1996, 2005). The Danish government has demanded that the nuclear reactors in Barseback be closed down and has thus created a bilateral environmental dispute with Sweden. Thus, the Barseback reactors embody a clear case of a bilateral ecological conflict.

The deterioration of water pollution in the Mediterranean Sea has engaged all riparian states in a process of collaboration and regime building in order to cope with this problem jointly (Haas, 1990). This is a pluri-party situation of mixed conflict and cooperation.

Global problems like climate warming or the depletion of the ozone layer in the atmosphere affect all nations and all people in some way or other. As a result, global negotiations have been conducted in these issue areas for two decades or longer (Benedick, 1990).

Issues in a conflict are not given by nature. They are constructions by the parties involved, although like the shadows in Plato's cave, they reflect a physical reality.²

This includes the perception of a trans­boundary dimension of an environmental issue. Essentially, issues have a trans­boundary dimension for two reasons. Either two or more countries directly share an environmental problem like water pollution in an inland waterway, or governments need to cooperate in order to develop effective meth­ods to stop local environmental degradation as in the case of threatened biodiversity (Jen, 1999).

However, there is not necessarily a perfect fit between the construction of trans-boundary issues in international contexts and the reality that they represent. For example, acidification of Scandinavian lakes existed as a noteworthy, real, domestic environmental problem long before its trans-boundary dimension was fully acknowledged in the negotiations on long- range air pollution in Europe (Bjorkbom, 1999). Governments and other international actors have a considerable latitude to delimit and define trans-boundary issues. Still, the real world trans-boundary character of an environmental issue represents constraints in this regard.

The trans-boundary dimension of an envi­ronmental issue can be conceived of as a package of relations of interdependence linking two or more countries. These cou­plings emerge when emissions of pollutants or hazardous waste, originating in one country, cross borders and cause environmental harm in another nation. How such interdependence packages with a conflict potential present themselves in a particular situation may have a considerable impact on how an ecological quarrel is structured and develops over time.

Some critical and recurrent characteristics of interdependence packages can be expected to have a certain predictable impact on an ecological conflict. An upstream/downstream model helps to describe an important part of the trans-boundary dimension of ecological conflicts.

The relative upstream/downstream position of a country has a noteworthy influence on how it takes a stand in an ecological conflict (Wolf, 1993; Furlong and Gleditsch, 2006). Dispute over water pollution in a river is both a concrete example and a model for the interpretation of this type of conditioned positioning.

Generally, downstream countries are more strongly victimized by the polluted water than upstream countries. As the river flows from its inland sources to the sea, it cumulates pollutants and waste from all riparian nations. For example, in the case of the Rhine, its flowing waterhas become more polluted when it reaches downstream Netherlands than it was in upstream Switzerland. Consequently, a downstream state typically has a greater incentive than upstream countries to cope with water pollution in collaboration with other riparian states. A downstream position also gives rise to a strong willingness to mobilize available power resources in a regime-building negotiation.

In a conflict involving riparian countries, upstream states have a power advantage because they have relatively more physical control of the pollution of a river than downstream nations. It also has a greater control of its own environmental predicament. For example, Tibet/China can reduce the water available from the Indus to downstream Pakistan by means of dam constructions, whereas Pakistan has no capacity to stop water flows going to Tibet/China.

An upstream position also gives more environment-specific power than a down­stream position because it has more environ­mental policy options.³ Land-based sources polluting the river within the national borders are located on its own territory. Therefore, the government of the extreme upstream country is less dependent on collaboration with other nations along the river as it controls so much stronger policy instruments. Domestic environmental policy measures to abate river pollution are likely to be much more effective than in downstream nations. The government of the extreme downstream country has less environment-specific power as it has more constrained decision autonomy with regard to the pollution problem: no satisfactory solution is possible without assistance from upstream countries. This skewed distribution of the need for mutual cooperation means asymmetrical interdependence which gives power leverage to the least dependent party, the upstream country.

The problem of acid rain due to long- range air pollution in Europe illustrates the upstream/downstream syndrome applied to a wider environmental context than a river. To some extent, all European states are damaged by certain pollutants (e.g. sulphur) that have originated in some other country. But some states are more injured than others because they have a more marked downstream position. With regard to long- range air pollution, Europe can be pictured as a trading system with upstream countries representing net exporters and downstream countries being net importers of pollutants. Net importers have been more concerned with reducing sulphur emissions in Europe than net exporters. How trans-boundary air pollution is generated also systematically influences how this issue is addressed in an ecological conflict.

It is particularly important to distinguish between two principal type situations. One contingency is represented by a conflict concerning a nuclear plant located close to an international border. If a nuclear accident occurs, the decision makers in a downstream country on the other side of the border can trace radioactive clouds back to a single emission point in the upstream country, giving a conflict with other countries a sharp focal point.

The structure of the conflict becomes quite dissimilar when many countries involved in an ecological conflict are both culprits and victims at the same time although to a varying degree and there are a multitude of emission sources. In such a multi-source situation, the allocation of responsibility for environmental damage becomes an extremely complicated and extensive part of conflict resolution. The case of the negotiations on long-range air pollution in Europe is a good illustration. In order to attain a fair understanding of who polluted who and to what degree, it was necessary to construct extremely complex computer models and use their results as input into the negotiation (the RAINS model and measurements of critical loads) (Bjorkbom, 1999).

(2) High issue complexities are a charac­teristic to deal with in international conflict resolution because they are difficult to analyze and assess and are furthermore characterized by a base of scarce and deficient knowl- edge/information. Recall that environmental issues are relatively new on the political agenda in individual nations as well as interna­tionally. In the early 1960s, special ministries or national central agencies for environmental issues were exceptional, although environ­mental degradation and destruction caused by human activities is certainly not a new phenomenon. After conquering Carthage, the Roman general Scipio Africanus had salt spread over the cultivated land around the city in order to prevent people from living in the area. Over the centuries, shipbuilding led to large-scale deforestation around the Mediterranean Sea which in turn led to dire environmental consequences. Nevertheless, many of the environmental issues that are currently on the agenda of international poli­tics are relatively new constructions that have been developed since the 1960s onward and particularly since the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment. The Stockholm Conference initiated an intensive period of regime building in the environmental area. In many cases, these regime-building processes were hampered by the lack of adequate issue knowledge needed for both effective problem solving and binding commitments.

Typically, environmental issues are pluri- dimensional in the sense that they contain several different layers of necessary knowl- edge/information that are inter-linked in a complex manner. The negotiated issue of climate change offers a good illustration. The bottom layer of this issue construction consists of knowledge/information about a number of greenhouse gases emitted from an enormous number of many types of sources located around the earth. This layer of issue knowledge describes the contents and volume of these emissions of greenhouse gases; their origin, their magnitude and the formation of long-term concentrations in the atmosphere (IPCC assessment reports).

Knowledge/information pertaining to the second layer of the issue construction con­cerns the immediate effects of expanding concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere/ climate warming: what increases of the temperature of the atmosphere are expected, and how fast this change will occur (IPCC assessment reports)?

The third layer, finally, refers to the consequences of climate warming and the fourth to counter-measures for the purpose of slowing/stopping climate warming and its consequences, or to adapting to them (IPCC assessment reports).

This multi-layer structure of required knowledge/information is one manifestation of the complexity characterizing environ­mental issues when they are addressed in processes of conflict resolution. Issue link­ages exemplify another important complexity dimension. Many environmental issues are not completely independent from one another, although they have been treated separately in the context of fairly autonomous inter­national regimes. For example, the issue area of climate change has strong links to several other institutionalized issue areas, for example, depletion of the ozone layer in the atmosphere and desertification. Ozone which is addressed in a separate institutional context for the purpose of stopping the depletion of the ozone layer is also one of the substances contributing to the warming of the atmosphere. Another example: halted climate warming would contribute to reducing desertification which also pertains to another regime than that of climate change.

Separation of issues and issue areas have in certain ways created more favorable conditions for regime building and conflict resolution in the area of environmental politics. Issue fragmentation has created a row of focal points which has contributed to significantly facilitating international envi­ronmental negotiation and regime building. However, reinforced issue linkages between numerous environmental issues have seem­ingly decreased the effectiveness of a regime­building strategy which is based on continued distinct fragmentation of issues. The strong recommendation of the 2002 Johannesburg Ministerial Conference (UNCSD) to pro­nounce sustainable development to be a guiding principle for international regime building and cooperation generally is one important indication.

Environmental issues are also often closely linked to issues belonging to policy areas outside the environmental sector, not least as a consequence of the UN norm of sustainable development. Water pollution is a good illustration. Water in a river represents a multitude of stakes for people and govern­ments of riparian countries due to its many functions. Some rivers supply drinking water and are an irreplaceable irrigation source. Transport of goods and people take place along rivers and across lakes. Inland water­ways contain biological resources, notably in the form of fish. Some rivers have a political meaning by representing a natural border between nations. In Europe, great rivers like the Rhine and the Danube have had this role at least since Roman times.

Linkages between water pollution and other different issues often make it difficult - even impossible - to tackle environmental issues separately. For example, in many cases, water pollution needs to be addressed as an element of a larger issue - water resources - which, in turn, is coupled with still other issues like, say, migration and national security.

Issue complexity may lead to an asymmet­rical distribution of knowledge/information with the effect that awareness and under­standing of a disputed issue varies consid­erably across stakeholders impeding joint perception, the construction of consensual knowledge and effective problem solving in a process of conflict resolution. This situation may, however, become counter-balanced by the effects of special institutions and proce­dures that have been established in order to bring scientific knowledge/information into the process.

(3) The tendency to involve a complex combination of participants in conflict res­olution is a characteristic generated by the complexity of environmental issues. In any non-military conflict between states, gov­ernments and their selected representatives in foreign ministries make up the core of the participants. Such traditional diplomatic encounters may occur also in ecological conflicts. But traditional diplomacy is often not sufficiently instrumental when states quarrel over environmental issues. Because they are technically complex, there is a strong demand for a variety of scientific expertise, which has drawn scientific advisors into the processes of conflict resolution. Often, invited scientists and other experts perform a very active role in conflict resolution, for example, in special working groups (Kjellen, 2007). The climate talks offer a good illustration.

When international conflicts erupt around environmental issues, they often tend to attract the attention of environmental NGOs, the public opinion and the media (Betsill and Corell, 2001). Environment represents one of the issue areas where the extent, as well as intensity, of NGO participation has been the greatest. At the present time, a considerable number of NGOs are drawn into international policy processes outside the environmental sector. This is a relatively new situation in many multilateral trade talks, for example, in the World Trade Organization. However, the situation was quite different under the predecessor organization of WTO. During the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) period ending in 1994, only a few international governmental organizations and practically no NGOs were given access to the multilateral trade negotiations as members or observers. In contrast, the participation of NGOs in the climate talks and other environmental negotiations has been exten­sive for decades and particularly after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992.

The mobilization of different kinds of actors into environmental negotiations has affected this type of conflict resolution in vari­ous significant ways. Firstly, the transparency of the negotiations has increased. Thereby, the room for maneuver for secret deals has decreased. Public opinion and lobbying groups have attained better possibilities to supervise and influence international negoti­ations. Increased actor complexity has con­tributed to make multilateral environmental negotiations more cumbersome. The process has become more protracted and it has become more difficult to reach a final agreement.

Some environmental issues have been regarded as abstract and distant by the general public such as, for example, biodiversity. However, some environmental issues like the risk of an accident occurring in a nuclear power plant have stirred up strong reactions by large parts of a country's population, green parties or militant environmental non­governmental organizations (NGOs). Such reactions, or other demonstrations by “green” actors, have often been reported under large headlines in the media and have sometimes had a strong influence on political decisions. A prime example is represented by nuclear policies in Austria, Germany and Sweden. In Austria, nuclear power was banned alto­gether although reactors had been constructed. A national referendum has prohibited the expansion of the Swedish nuclear problem and the German nuclear policy is strongly constrained by the “green” opinion.

Opinion building and lobbying by green groups may emerge as an influential force in some ecological conflicts complicating conflict resolution in various ways. For example, the central decision makers in a country importing an environmental problem may be forced to take a hard stand against the nation exporting it. This may, in turn, lead to other complicating developments like conflict escalation and less room for pragmatic compromises.

(4) The distribution of negative rather than positive values is a concern for the parties in an ecological conflict. Positive values are often related to natural resources (e.g. fresh water) that will be preserved by the abatement of an environmental problem (e.g. pollution). Negative values are represented by abatement costs. However, abatement as such is related to a structure of only negative values. Environmental deterioration or destruction is perceived as a cost that has to be offset by another cost generated by the measures that are applied in order to achieve abatement.

Thus, parties to ecological conflicts typi­cally quarrel or fight about the distribution of negative values and the tradeoff between environmental destruction costs and environ­mental abatement costs (Sjostedt, 1993). This predicament can be expected to influence how conflicting parties act in a negotiation or other type of conflict resolution. Prospect theory suggests that parties perform differently when they are confronted with expected gains and losses respectively (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979). They tend to be more sensitive to losses than to gains. This represents a hindrance as compared to processes of conflict resolution which, like trade talks in WTO, ultimately strive to distribute positive values. The special uncertainty problems that also characterize ecological conflicts contribute to increasing the significance of this obstacle still further.

(5) Pluri-Iayered uncertainty problems plague environmental issues. Someecological conflicts erupt because the parties involved become aware of the seriousness of an environmental problem. Negotiation on long- range air pollution in Europe took off when dead and dying forests activated the German government (Backstrand, 2001). The visual observation of actual holes in the ozone layer situated in the stratosphere convinced governments around the world that joint action was necessary to cope with this problem. Often, an environmental crisis due to new environmental awareness has been an important precondition for negotiation, conflict resolution and regime building.

Three dimensions of climate warming need to be considered simultaneously in international negotiations. One focus is set on emissions of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. These releases build up concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which will then raise the average atmospheric temperature in the future. In turn, the higher temperature is expected to cause various harmful or disastrous effects such as, for example, storms, floods or desertification (Luterbacher and Sprintz, 2001).

All these three layers of the complex structure of the issue of climate change (emis­sions, concentration, warming and harmful consequences), as well as the causal rela­tionships between them, are characterized by problematic uncertainty. Scientists can only roughly estimate current emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and they are still more uncertain about the volume of future releases. Some nations are more problematic than others. There is agreement within the scientific community that larger concentrations of greenhouse gases will warm the atmosphere but there are different views of how large this increase will be. Many researchers have described possible negative effects of climate warming but there is no comprehensive and certain appraisal of what its total costs will be this year, next year or further in the future (IPCC assessment reports). The effects of possible approaches to slow down or stop climate warming are also uncertain. For example, scientists cannot predict with reasonable certainty what positive effects will follow from a 20% global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The special uncertainty problems related to environmental issues have a variety of consequences for conflict resolution. Many of these effects follow one of two different tracks.

One track tends to involuntarily slow down the process or even prevent its successful conclusion. The high degree of perceived uncertainty regarding both environmental problems and possible problem solutions can be expected to make the parties more reluctant to make costly and binding commitments, for example, to make considerable cuts of emis­sions of hazardous substances coming from important human activities like agriculture, transports or industrial production of goods. Uncertainty impedes parties from making reli­able assessments of the relationship between the costs of climate warming and of climate policy measures respectively.

Another track calls for more effective management of the uncertainty problems. The usual strategy to attain this objective is to bring more scientific knowledge/information into the process. This development may in itself have consequences for a process of conflict resolution. For example, special procedures or organizational bodies may have to be created in order to make the accumulation of scientific knowledge instru­mental and adequate. Scientists may have to be invited to participate in the conflict resolution process that otherwise would have been completely dominated by diplomats and top policy makers. The involvement of scientists may contribute to frame the risk discourse used in the process which in turn may have an impact on how conflicting parties interact.

(6) Issue frames highlighting either crisis or risk underlie environmental conflicts. Environmental issues in a potential or actual ecological conflict reflect a physical reality but are still constructions by the conflicting par­ties. An issue construction related to a given real world phenomenon (say, emissions of certain pollutants) may take on different forms and contents depending on the circumstances at hand and the interests of leading actors. Issue framing, pre-negotiation and agenda setting represent strategic stages in a process of conflict resolution (Bercovitch, 1991; Elgstrom and Stromvik, 2005). However, policy makers tend to choose between two main frames when they address international, environmental issues. One is crisis and the other is risk.

An environmental issue is likely to be framed as a crisis when actual and consider­able damages are occurring at the present time, driving a number of stakeholders to put this topic on a joint agenda (Boin, et al. 2005). The 1987 catastrophic accident in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was immediately framed as a crisis in the Soviet Union itself as well as in numerous neighboring countries. Clouds of radioactive particles were blown toward Western and Northwestern Europe, contaminating large areas of land.

Ensuing inter-governmental talks about Chernobyl essentially focused on two topics. In the short term, discussions concerned the actual development of the Chernobyl disaster and its immediate consequences in neighboring countries around the Soviet Union (The Case of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident, 2002). Chernobyl also affected the ongoing negotiation in IAEA on nuclear safety very strongly. These talks had been stalled and without result for several years. The Chernobyl accident happened in May 1987. Already in the autumn the same year, a treaty on nuclear safety was negotiated during a few brief months (Sjostedt, 1993).

In contrast, the issue of a nuclear accident at the Swedish nuclear plant at Barseback has been framed as a risk (Lofstedt, 1996). No dis­aster has actually happened but some parties think it may transpire in the future. This is a risk that people in neighboring Copenhagen are not willing to take. In the informal and relatively non-transparent discussion about Barseback, the Danish side wants the Swedish government to establish a concrete plan for the closure of this nuclear plant.

The distinction between a crisis and a risk perspective on an international environmental issue is important because the two approaches will probably lead to distinctly dissimilar patterns of interaction in an ecological conflict.

A crisis situation puts high values at stake and requires swift action, while at the same time, parties typically lack essential information about the situation (Boin et al., 2005). There is a need for creative and inno­vative policy measures to reach constructive agreements between states. The high values at stake in an ecological crisis represent a strong motivation for most or all parties to do something about the rapidly deteriorating situation. The trans-boundary dimension calls for joint state action but is also a potential source of conflict. The high, or extreme, stakes involved may incite conflicting parties to prioritize their own separate interests over common interests. Uncertainty regarding the environmental issue that has provoked the ecological crisis may also obstruct effective collaboration because parties make different risk assessments.

Climate change is a prime example of an environmental issue in international nego­tiation that from the start was framed as a risk. Some experts and opinion builders argue that negative effects of climate warming have already occurred, for example, in the form of stronger hurricanes and more rainfalls in recent years. The mainstream of the international scientific community believes that more damaging consequences of climate warming will occur in 40-50 years when the average temperature of the atmosphere is expected to have risen between two and three degrees Celsius or even more, unless powerful counter-measures are implemented. A large number of scientific investigations support this assessment while admitting that it has some degree of uncertainty. It is not possible to determine with certainty how large amounts of greenhouse gases will be emitted into the atmosphere in the coming decades, exactly what the harmful effects will be and how they will be distributed around the world. Neither can it be predicted with certainty exactly what alternative counter­measures will accomplish. Nor can it be foreseen with certainty exactly how costly each such approach will be.

In a conflict related to an environmental cri­sis, a main problem is the need for immediate action which may lead to miscalculations and mistakes (Robinson, 1996). In a risk scenario, a principal problem is instead diverging risk perceptions amongst conflicting parties in combination with relatively poor instruments for risk communication (Linneroth et al., 2001). As a result, parties will often find it difficult to attain a common understanding of the problem concerned and develop a joint solution to the environmental problem on the table. Particularly, environmental issues are typically characterized by a high degree of uncertainty impeding costly commitments.

In numerous cases, the countries involved in an ecological conflict have not been able - or willing - to engage themselves in a project of environmental problem solving conceived of as risk management until a crisis situation emerges. Long-range air pollution in Europe is one example. Pictures in German newspapers of dead forests damaged by acidification represented a turning point in these talks.

(7) Securitization of environmental issues occasionally appears by all, or some, of the stakeholders in an ecological conflict including national governments. In many, and probably most cases, environmental issues have been treated in the context of “normal” politics in both national and international affairs. But when securitized, the environmental issue takes on a new character (Eriksson, 2002; Balzacq, 2005).

The main reason for the securitization of environmental issues is their representation of values of extreme importance generally pertaining to scarce natural resources (Homer- Dixon, 1999; Dolatyar and Gray, 2000). For example, pollution in inland waterways may drastically reduce the quality and quantity of available fresh water resources in a region, thereby causing serious health problems and perhaps making living conditions unsup­portable. Likewise, desertification diminishes available water resources in a region, hence threatening cultivated land, cattle and other animals and may lead to losses of human life. In recent decades, such developments have occurred in Sudan and other parts of the Sahel area. More frequent and stronger storms due to climate warming will kill people, destroy their houses and property, as well as public and private infrastructure not least in coastal areas. Rising sea levels will have similar effects. Melting glaciers will cause both inundations and water scarcity in downstream countries.

Securization may contribute to intensify an ecological conflict and also to change the performance of the parties when they strive to cope with a conflict, for example, increase their willingness to take risks by resorting to a unilateral strategy. How large risks are governments willing to take in an ecological crisis?Are they ready to go to war?Acommon opinion is that detrimental environmental effects do not lead directly to violent conflict, although they may contribute to intensifying a conflict regarding other issues such as territory, ethnicity or the distribution of natural resources (Homer-Dixon, 1991). On the other hand, the awareness of the risk for violent confrontation may strongly increase the incentives for the parties to the ecological conflict to search for a cooperative resolution approach.

Fight or talk? special and typical features in the resolution of environmental conflicts

The ultimate question addressed in this chapter is if, and how, ecological conflicts have certain typical features distinguishing them as a separate category. The chapter has proposed that if such typical features exist, they are to some extent conditioned by typical and special attributes of environ­mental issues: trans-boundary, complexity, stakeholders, negative values, uncertainty, securitization, crisis or risk, and institution­alization in international regimes. One could also add their tendency to mobilize NGOs and public opinion.

Some of these environmental issue charac­teristics seem to influence the basic approach governments choose to defend their interests in an ecological conflict, particularly whether they prefer to fight - to use military force - or whether they prefer to talk, to negotiate and prioritize problem solving.

Fighting in ecological conflicts has oc­curred in some international ecological con­flicts. Some analysts warn that ecological conflicts will grow more serious in the future and increase the risk for military confronta­tion. Others argue that the support for this proposition is weak for both methodological and empirical reasons. They contend that there is no single known example of a conflict on an environmental issue which has directly driven two or more nations to start a war. The implication is that fighting is not likely to take place in pure ecological conflicts, to use a categorization introduced at the beginning of this chapter. Neither can fighting be expected to occur in embracing ecological conflicts like the negotiations on climate change or ozone depletion.

However, it is also pointed out in the liter­ature that ecological issues have recurrently been associated with military confrontations in the Third World although they have not represented a single or even clear cause of war. The typical situation seems to be an embedded ecological conflict, in which the environmen­tal element has interacted with other factors like ethnicity, political/ideological difference or an unequal distribution of natural resources (Libiszewski, 1992; Carius et al., 1997; Homer-Dixon, 1999).

The civil war in southern Sudan (Darfur) is one example of such an embedded ecological

conflict (Johnson, 2003). War between the North and the South in Sudan has occurred repeatedly for centuries and is part of the colonial legacy. The conflict has an important ethnic/cultural dimension expressed by the differences between Arab/Muslims in the North and African/Christians in the South. Oil in the South and water in the Nile have represented critical bones of contention between the North and the South. Internal large flows of refugees and across its borders to neighboring countries have contributed to worsen and further internationalize the civil war in Sudan.

Some ecological problems have also played an important role in the conflict about Darfur. Climate change, desertification and the environmental destruction caused by the exploitation of oil resources have decreased the area of habitable land and other resources, notably water, to an extent that they cannot sustain the population living in the area. This situation has caused starvation, flows of refugees and also intensified the conflict about the increasingly scarce land where people can live and survive.

It is, hence, argued that environmental degradation represents an important back­ground factor in the Darfur conflict, as well as in other military confrontations in the Third World. Environmental damage is significant because it contributes to create, or sustain, conditions which increase the risk for mili­tary confrontations. Allegedly, environmental factors have had a similar role in other Third World embedded ecological conflicts. A recurrent scenario is that environmental degradation causes or reinforces the depletion of a natural resource which is of critical importance in the geographical area where the embedded ecological conflict unfolds. In turn, this resource depletion is one of the factors causing, reinforcing or sustaining the use of military means or other instruments of force in an embedded ecological conflict.

However, when an embedded ecological conflict leads to military confrontations, the parties involved are not likely to focus on the environmental dimension. Environmental issues will remain background factors.

A couple of special properties of environ­mental issues may affect a militarized ecolog­ical conflict. For example, if in an embedded ecological conflict, an environmental issue which is strongly linked to a scarce natural resource such as fresh water is securitized or is framed as a crisis, it may conceivably reinforce or sustain the causes of violent approaches to conflict resolution.

However, if an embedded ecological con­flict evolves into international or civil war between conflicting parties, the special or typ­ical features of environmental issues are not likely to influence how the military operations are conducted by the conflicting parties. They are concerned with more immediate issues like the direct control of land, water and people.

In recent decades, military conflicts with an ecological component have exclusively taken place in the developing world and often in extremely poor countries like Congo and Sudan. Such international or civil wars have not confronted well-trained armies equipped with sophisticated weapons systems. Often, primitive weapons have been employed with brutality not only in battles but also against civilian populations in order to drive them away from the land they live on. In the process, horrendous atrocities have been committed and large migration flows have been generated. Thousands and sometimes millions of refugees have fled out of the war zone and into neighboring countries. Due to weak or failed states, conflict res­olution has been cumbersome and has in many cases required far-reaching conciliation measures.

“Talking” in ecological conflicts represents the normal approach to the resolution of ecological conflicts; dialogue and negotiation (Sjostedt, 1993; Susskind et al., 2002). The dominance of peaceful conflict resolution is total amongst industrialized countries. Pure and embracing ecological conflicts have up till now excluded military confrontations regardless of what countries have been involved.

The absence of violence in ecological conflicts that are not embedded in other types of conflict concerning, say, national security, territory or ethnicity is due to both instrumental and normative factors pertaining to the general characteristics of environmental issues. Issue complexity is a basic instru­mental conditioning factor. Even if the trans­boundary nature of an environmental problem like pollution in the atmosphere, in the ocean or in inland waterways is obvious, it has often been unclear exactly how problem causes and problem effects are distributed between the nations involved. Although the trans­boundary character of many environmental issues has been a necessary condition for the emergence of an international ecological conflict, its close association with issue complexity has created a need for common international problem solving enabling joint abatement. The effective solution of most trans-boundary environmental conflicts pre­cludes unilateral action in order to cope with this problem. Voluntary cooperation between exporters and importers of pollution is usually necessary because all nations are typically both exporting and importing pollution.

Conflict resolution efforts are much more concentrated on environmental issues in pure and embracing ecological conflicts than in embedded ecological conflicts. Accordingly, the impact of the special and typical features of environmental issues has a stronger impact in these two cases. In this sense, conflict res­olution in the form of dialogue or negotiation tends to be colored by the characteristics of the environmental issue addressed to a much higher extent than in an embedded ecological conflict where the impact can be expected to be nil.

Peaceful resolution of an ecological conflict may unfold in a bilateral setting. One case of illustration is the location of a nuclear power plant in border areas like in the cases of the Temelin (Austria/Czech Republic) and Barseback (DenmarkZSweden) nuclear power plants.

These two cases indicate that bilateral conflict resolution amongst industrialized countries regarding a sensitive environmental issue, like the risk for a nuclear accident, tends to have a low transparency. The negotiation on the Temelin reactors points to at least two basic reasons why the parties to a bilateral environmental negotiation, in this case the governments of Austria and the Czech Republic respectively, want to conduct the dialogue under a veil of secrecy. They both wish to avoid opinion building against their preferred line of action. One party (in the example, the Czech Republic) is requested by the other side to undertake measures to reduce the negotiated environ­mental problem (in the example, to close down the nuclear power plant). The two governments want low transparency in order to conceal possible necessary concessions to the other side. This predicament is not unusual in international negotiations but is particularly pronounced when environmen­tal issues are addressed. A reason is that NGOs and other opinion builders have so far had easier and more extensive access to international decision processes in the environmental issue area than in most other policy sectors.

The recurrent properties of environmental issues have a tendency to color the peace­ful resolution of ecological conflicts. This influence is diffuse and complex. Different issue properties tend to have a somewhat dissimilar impact on the process of con­flict resolution. Furthermore, the effects of individual properties of environmental issues tend to vary as the process of international negotiation evolves stagewise from pre­negotiation to agenda setting and issue clari­fication through negotiation on formula and detail to agreement and post-negotiation.⁴ Implementation of an agreement may also be included in the process of conflict resolution, particularly if it is part of a recursive, multilateral negotiation. Implementation may follow after, or unfold parallel to, post­negotiation (Zartman, 1994; Kremenyuk, 2002). For example, post-negotiation may start because of implementation difficulties or problems that emerge as a consequence of successful implementation.

Pre-negotiation in a process of ecological conflict resolution has typically unfolded at a high political level (Pantev, 1998). However, in many cases, these inter-governmental consultations have followed discussions amongst scientists that may have been going on for years. The key driver in the initiation of the pre-negotiation has been awareness of top decision makers of a common environmental problem and some of its key characteristics, its trans-boundary dimension, the high or extreme stakes involved, an emerging crisis situation, diverging interests in some leading nations and tendencies of issue securitization in some states. Awareness has been the result of the inter-play of various factors, especially build-up of issue knowledge in the international scientific community in combination with dramatic media reports.

Agenda setting and issue clarification in any multilateral talks has strategic meaning because the outcome of this process stage conditions ensuing activities in the negotia­tion and ultimately the agreement that will be attained in the process. In multilateral environmental negotiation, agenda setting is particularly important and not least the element which is here referred to as issue clarification. One reason is the combination of dense international interdependence, extreme complexity and high degree of uncertainty typifying important environmental issues, such as climate change, ozone depletion or biodiversity.

In contrast to, say, tariffs or territory, environmental issues are relatively new on the agenda of international politics. In combination with high issue complexity and uncertainty, this state of affairs has meant that negotiating parties have found it necessary to allocate large resources to both individual and joint knowledge building in order to elucidate the ecological issue addressed. Issue clarification has become a crucial element of agenda setting. In all negotiations, the parties obviously need sufficient knowledge and updated information about questions that have been put on the negotiation and hence also the entire table. This knowledge/information affects the performance of the actors involved and hence indirectly has an impact on the whole negotiation process. However, knowledge and knowledge builders have a somewhat different role and impact in a typical environmental negotiation, a process of conflict resolution, than in talks in many other issue areas. The UN negotiation on climate change is a helpful case of illustration (UNFCCC, 2002).

The climate talks cover highly contentious issues. For example, there is the deep divergence between the United States and the European Union concerning the future of the Kyoto Protocol and the difference between the OECD member states and developing countries regarding binding commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. However, the climate talks are driven by the joint interest of negoti­ating parties to cope with climate warming and the disastrous consequences that it is expected to engender unless effective counter­measures are undertaken. The resolution of conflict is subordinated to joint problem solving.

The conflict between negotiating parties concerns primarily what policy instruments should be employed to arrest climate warming (e.g. market instruments or regulations); and how abatement costs (e.g. emission reductions) should be distributed between nations. National positions depend on a solid and accurate basis of scientific knowledge enabling policy makers and negotiators to fully understand climate change; its causes, its manifestations, its consequences as well as the costs and benefits of mitigation and adaptation. Control of knowledge and information has a central part in the power game of nations which is embedded in the climate negotiation. This situation is similar in other environmental talks although the climate talks represent an extreme case indicated by a special institution, the Inter­governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with the primary task of building and disseminating knowledge/information (Skodvin, 2000). The output of this process has been consensual knowledge which has functioned as an important driver in the climate talks. Consensual knowledge has not only served as a common frame of reference for negotiating parties (Rothstein, 1984). It has also identified their specified common interests early in the climate talks, as well as in other environmental negotiations, beginning already in the agenda setting phase of the process. Common interests are implied by the definition and description of the environmental problem which has brought about an international negotiation. For example, in the negotiation on long- range air pollution in Europe, the scientific description of acid rain implied a joint interest of all European nations to elimi­nate its causes, and sulphur emissions into the atmosphere. Although governments had differing views of the problem of acid rain as such, major conflict in this area concerned the measures to cope with it in coordinated national policies (Backstrand, 2001). A principal bone of contention has been the distribution of emission reductions. As seen from the perspective of conflict resolution, a special feature of environmental negotiations has been that negotiating parties specify their separate interests following agreement on joint interests and general common goals.

The agenda setting stage of environmental negotiations is dominated by knowledge diplomacy (Haas, 1996). In this phase of the talks, the capacity to contribute to the framing of issues and the construction of consensual knowledge represents a principal avenue to influence over other parties or over the whole process.

Multilateral environmental negotiations have typically been recursive building up an international agreement stepwise. The institu­tionalization of issue constructions following from this recursive progress has gradually narrowed down the room of maneuver in agenda setting and issue clarification as the process of negotiation has unfolded.

Bargaining on formula and detail is a significant part of multilateral negotiation that has been described as “the manage­ment of complexity” (Zartman, 1994). The transition from agenda setting to negotiation on formula represents a particularly critical stage in this management process. A formula is necessary to make the issues at stake negotiable during the remaining stages of the negotiation (Skodvin, 1999). In environ­mental negotiations with their comparatively complex issues, formula construction has been relatively demanding as compared to other issue areas. Scientific knowledge, and sometimes scientific models, have been nec­essary tools to develop a formula that is both politically and technically feasible (Amann, 2007).

Multilateral negotiations put a premium on the ability to find integrative solutions by defining situations in ways that include and are responsive to the perspectives and needs of all the parties. Verbal persuasion replaces bargaining from strength, and con­sensus supplements compromise. Neverthe­less, international environmental negotiation is partly colored by ecological conflict and is a power game in which parties strive to promote and defend their interests. For this purpose, they may employ various types of influencing methods. They may, for example, resort to political pressure or sanctions in order to get concessions from another party. However, knowledge diplomacy conditioned by issue complexity represents a major avenue to effective influence in environ­mental negotiations embedding ecological conflicts.

In some cases and under some conditions, smaller states with little military power are able to cope with this situation. The negoti­ations on long-range air pollution in Europe exhibit a good example (Larsson, 1996). In its initial stages, these talks were driven by two Scandinavian countries, Norway and Sweden, against an opposition including all major West European nations. The main explanation is that these small states had built up a superior knowledge about acidi­fication and other aspects of long-range air pollution because they were the first serious victims. However, usually sophisticated issue knowledge needed for effective diplomacy in ecological conflicts is highly asymmetrically distributed amongst conflicting parties in a pattern that is favorable to larger and technologically highly developed countries. Poor and less developed countries are not able to pursue effective knowledge diplomacy and for this reason they have difficulties in defending their interests. A large Third World coalition of states like the Group of 77 may have a certain veto power which, however, is strongly limited and has often been circumvented by counter-strategies of the more advanced nations, such as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol annexed to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A small victory of developing countries was that they were able to avoid binding commitments to reduce emission of greenhouse gases although they became part of the Kyoto Protocol. But developing countries were not able to stop industrialized countries from signing and putting the Kyoto Protocol into operation.

Other issue characteristics than high com­plexity also constrain conflict resolution in international environmental negotiation. The special uncertainty problems of environmen­tal issues and their propensity to be framed as risk is likely to affect the negotiation process negatively, particularly when nego­tiation parties begin to consider costly and binding commitments. One reason is that a government is not able to make a trustworthy assessment of the ratio of current costs (say emission reductions) and future benefits (say the utility of stabilized greenhouse gas con­centrations in the atmosphere) caused by an international agreement such as an amended Kyoto Protocol. The lack of comparatively certain cost/benefit assessments results in a lack of enthusiasm to accept a costly undertaking in order to cope with climate warming. This is the position that the United States and other nations have taken with regard to the Kyoto Protocol.

In contrast, institutionalization of issues and procedures for negotiation and conflict resolution has in many cases contributed to facilitating talks on environmental issues. Institutionalization may be regarded as one face of a learning process in which negotiation parties gradually develop more effective methods for both problem solving and exchange of concessions.