Introduction

Abstract

The issues of global environmental change, as epitomised by the problems of ozone layer depletion and global warming, are firmly entrenched upon the international agenda. During the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the consequences of human intervention in the earth’s natural systems became evident in two significant ways. First, scientific investigations after the 1985 discovery of an ozone ‘crater’ above Antarctica revealed that chlorofluorocarbons and other widely-used substances were destroying the earth’s protective ozone layer. And second, in 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded with certainty that

emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases … These increases will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface.¹