Environmental Problems Associated With International Politics
- The accelerating combustion of fossil hydrocarbons over the last century has fundamentally changed the the earth's atmosphere. Disruption of the atmospheric carbon cycle has trapped more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the global average temperature is rising. Atmospheric carbonization is associated with climate destabilization, rising sea levels and the possibility of runaway warming if permafrost melts. Because fossil fuel is burned for profit and survival throughout the world, with competition between nations, it has been very difficult for nations to agree about what to do. The Kyoto Accord is the most well-known attempt to get international consensus on global warming policy, and it has repeatedly stalled.
- Deforestation is closely related to climate change. Forests sequester carbon -- trapping it in trees and within the forest biomes. Intensive logging for wood products, clearing forests for agribusiness and urban development have already destroyed over 80 percent of the world's forests. Economic interests have created resistance to decisive international agreements to slow or halt the process of deforestation. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has attempted to cobble together an agreement called the REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation), or the Paris-Oslo Initiative, but it is still in the talking stage.
- Fishing corporations now employ giant fishing trawlers with huge, pelagic nets that rip apart fishery structure and indiscriminately scoop up every species in their paths, including sea mammals. Profitable species are kept, and the no-saleable species -- called bycatch -- have their carcasses thrown overboard. Fish migrate between regions under the control of various nations. Overfishing, indiscriminate catches like the trawlers make, and poaching deplete fisheries beyond any unified jurisdiction. In 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea attempted to correct the problem, but the Convention has proven inadequate so far at halting the progressive decline of the world's fisheries.
- Fresh water is an international political issue, too. Not only has access to this essential resource been a source of conflict in places around the world, conflicts have arisen with regard to pollution of shared rivers and aquifers. In recent decades, the push by transnational corporations to privatize water supplies has led to intense political resistance inside nations to initiatives by foreign corporations protected by international trade rules. The ascendancy of an anti-globalization party in Bolivia grew directly out of a protest against the U.S.-based Bechtel's attempt to privatize Bolivia's water supply.
