The Environmental Agenda: Canada, the United States and Acid Rain

Abstract

It is not hard to see why environmental issues should be regarded as quintessentially ‘international’. After all, by their very nature they deny the logic of accepted territorial divisions both within and between national communities. The actions of one jurisdiction, in the areas of water and air pollution, for example, can have catastrophic consequences for neighbours far and near. Moreover, if solutions are to be found to the problems of global warming, these imply the necessity of international cooperative action. Consequently, the development of the environmental agenda has become closely associated with the growth of international organizations operating in the area.¹ Whether these are intergovernmental bodies such as the United Nations Environment Programme set up in the wake of the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the environment, or nongovernmental — for example, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, which has become the most significant nonofficial organization in the conservation area — their activities reinforce the image of progress in the environmental area residing outside the confines of national borders.