Comments: The Atmosphere as Global Commons

Abstract

Today, you have heard from numerous U.N. officials, diplomats, and government advisors. I come before you as an academic, an educator, and a writer. As a social scientist, I have been specializing for twenty years on the subject of international environmental law and policy. I have been especially interested in matters pertaining to the management of global commons, such as the oceans and seabed, outer space, and Antarctica. The atmosphere can also be described as a global commons, although it is perhaps not as clear-cut an example as the others. Use of the other global commons is to varying degrees governed by major framework treaties, namely the Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, and the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. These treaties have been the foundations for the international regimes that evolved to address problems related to the use of the commons. There is no similar foundation agreement that referees use of the atmosphere. In fact, the atmosphere has hardly been viewed as a legitimate object of international environmental law and policy. Rather, distinct regimes have been created to address atmospheric problems related to several types of human-produced pollutants.