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Time: T-Th 2:00-3:20; 166 Lawrence |
Office Hours: Thurs 11:45-1:45 by signup, & by appointment |
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Phone: 346-4880 |
Office: PLC-921 |
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Email: rmitchel@uoregon.edu |
Course web page: http://www.uoregon.edu/~rmitchel/iep/ |
PS477/577: International Environmental Politics
Increasingly, nations cannot solve their environmental problems through domestic policy alone. Governments, nongovernmental organizations, and editorial pundits frequently proclaim the need for international solutions to environmental problems ranging from preserving wetlands and wildlife to protecting the global atmosphere. In some issue areas, nations have reached international agreements, in others, treaties remain elusive. Although environmental problems certainly -- and, we hope, their solutions -- will continue to increase in number and importance in the future, solutions to many existing international environmental problems provide us with experience with which to better understand the types of solutions available, the processes by which they can be instituted, and how effective those solutions have been at solving environmental problems.
This course develops five perspectives from which to understand why environmental problems arise and how we can solve them. It then explores three processes of international policy development: identifying problems, designing and negotiating solutions, and implementing policies to change national behavior. We will use case studies to develop our understandings of these processes. We will ask questions such as: What conditions produce agreements between countries to resolve problems? What types of rules prove most successful at inducing compliance? How do we evaluate whether a treaty has been effective or successful? How do nations improve treaty effectiveness over time? In short, we want to identify the sorts of agreements that will help the nations of the world solve their environmental problems.
These questions require careful attention to causal analysis, i.e., to showing that one or more factors caused the outcome we observe and that absent that factor, the observed outcome would not have occurred. Thus, a major element of this course will require that you identify and skeptically evaluate all causal claims (your own, mine, and those of authors you read) regarding environmental problems. For example, this will require being initially dubious of claims that the International Whaling Commission has been in any way responsible for the decrease in the number of whales caught since the mid-1980s, that growing scientific knowledge was the real cause for signature of the ozone protection treaty, or that treaties ever have any influence on behavior. I require PS205: Introduction to International Relations as a prerequisite to ensure that you have some familiarity with causal analysis, counterfactuals, and rigorous empirical evaluation. I hope that developing your ability to think causally will be the most important contribution of this course to your education.
· Elizabeth R. DeSombre. 2002. The Global Environment and World Politics: International Relations for the 21st Century. New York: Continuum Press. Referred to as DeSombre.
· Ken Conca, Michael Alberty, and Geoffrey Dabelko. 1998. Green Planet Blues: Environmental Politics from Stockholm to Rio, 2nd Edition. Boulder: Westview Press. Referred to as GPB.
· Online Course Pack: The class web page (http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rmitchel/iep/) may have links to online readings.
If you must make choices, place higher priority on DeSombre and the Online Course Pack, and less priority on GPB. Readings are intended as another source for information about international environmental politics -- they are additional to (rather than redundant with) class lectures. I welcome students raising issues from the readings in class.
Come to class regularly and actively participate in class discussions. Asking questions or making comments during class does contribute to your grade. Unfortunately, shy people do not get a "pass" on this part of the grade - if you are a shy person, please make sure to speak up several times during the course of the term.
You must write two essays responding to a brief question regarding the reading and the material in lecture. One will be on the Tragedy of the Commons and the other will be on the Relative Effectiveness of Regimes
There are two assignments related to developing the argument of your final paper for the course. Their main value lies in providing you with feedback that will help you improve the final paper you write.
Students will complete a research paper of 20 double-spaced pages (25-30 for graduate students) that will evaluate whether a particular environmental treaty has been effective at improving the environmental problem that motivated its creation. For more details on this paper, see the more detailed assignment description.
I will give up to 10 extra points on the final paper (i.e., up to 4 extra points on the course grade) to students who identify a data set not identified on the course data webpage. I will grade all papers the same and then give up to 10 additional points for those who identify a new data source that meets the following criteria. Please see me if you have questions
Requirements and allocation of extra credit points:
· It CANNOT be an online source - it must be from a book or journal article. Use the library not the web.
· It CANNOT be simply a hardcopy of data available via the data links I provided.
· 2 points: Xerox copy of the data itself PLUS full, properly formatted citation of source.
· 1-2 points: 1 point if at least 10 years of data for at least 4 countries; 2 points if over 20 years of data for at least 4 countries or if over 10 years of data for at least 10 countries
· 3 points: Provide electronic version of data as Excel or Word file with source citation by email.
· 3 points: If dataset compiled from 3 different sources (e.g., compiling data from several annual reports).
By enrolling in this course, you agree to accept the University Policy on Academic Dishonesty. Read http://www.uoregon.edu/~conduct/sai.htm and http://libweb.uoregon.edu/guides/plagiarism/students/ and make sure you understand them. Although ungraded, this is a requirement for the course. All assignments must be exclusively your own work. Neither ignorance of these policies nor the lack of an intention to cheat or plagiarize will be considered a legitimate defense. Raise any questions you have with the professor before problems arise.
· Sustainable development means "treating the earth as if we intended to stay" -- (Robert Gray, 1993).
· When asked whether he would like people in India to have the same standard of living as the British, Gandhi responded "It took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve this prosperity. How many planets will a country like India require?" -- (T. N. Khoshoo, 1995).
· "The extinction of a species, each one a pilgrim of four billion years of evolution, is an irreversible loss. Death can be accepted and to some degree transformed. But the loss of lineages and all their future young is not something to accept. It must be rigorously and intelligently resisted ... Death is one thing, an end to birth is something else" -- (Gary Snyder, 1990).
· "I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world" -- (Margaret Mead, 1964).
· A serious research study is "a study by someone whose mind could conceivably have been changed by the evidence" -- (Paul Krugman, 1993).
PS 477/577: International Environmental Politics
DeSombre, Ch. 1.
"Twenty-five Years of Global Environmental Politics" in GPB ch. Intro.
Mitchell, Ronald B. 2002a. International environment. In Handbook of International Relations, edited by Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth Simmons, 500-16. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. On-line Readings.
DeSombre, Ch. 2.
Mitchell, Ronald B. and Thomas Bernauer. 1998. Empirical research on international environmental policy: designing qualitative case studies. Journal of Environment and Development 7 (1):4-31. On-line Readings.
DeSombre, Ch. 4.
Dennis Pirages, "Global Technopolitics" in GPB ch. 09.
Sheila Jasanoff , "Skinning Scientific Cats" in GPB ch. 15.
TREATY ASSIGNMENT #1: due beginning of class.
Donella H. Meadows, et. al., "Limits to Growth," in GPB ch. 01.
Ken Conca, "Rethinking the Ecology-Sovereignty Debate," in GPB ch. 07.
Reitan, Eric. 1996. Deep Ecology and the Irrelevance of Morality. Environmental Ethics 18 (4):411-24. On-line Readings.
DISCUSSION PAPER: "Tragedy of the Commons" due at beginning of class (< 1500 words – provide a word count): Write a paper that includes the following four sections.
1) Description: describe/define a Tragedy of the Commons (ToC).
2) Examples: describe one international environmental problem and show how it involves a ToC and another international environmental problem and show how it DOES NOT involve a ToC.
3) Causes: what causes a ToC to arise?
4) Solutions: what strategies can those caught in a ToC use to avert the outcomes we expect in such situations?
Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," in GPB ch. 03.
Susan J. Buck, "No Tragedy of the Commons," in GPB ch. 04.
David Feeny, et al., "The Tragedy of the Commons: Twenty-two Years Later" in GPB ch. 05.
William Ophuls, "The Scarcity Society," in GPB ch. 06.
Jim MacNeill, et al., "The Shadow Ecologies of Western Economies," in GPB ch. 08.
Computer simulation: We will simulate the Tragedy of the Commons online during class. Prepare your strategy before class. Start by playing the "Optimizing a Private Farm" game on the course website. During the in-class game, you will decide how many cows you want to put on a commons to which all others in the community have access. Your goal is to maximize the milk your cows produce (so you can share that milk with homeless people in your community). What strategy will you use to ensure that you and the rest of the class do not overgraze the commons? How will you convince other class members to adopt your strategy? What should you do in the meantime to make sure you still can give milk to homeless people this year?
DeSombre, Ch. 9.
Tesh, Sylvia N. and Bruce A. Williams. 1996. Identity politics, disinterested politics, and environmental justice. Polity 18:285-305. On-line Readings.
Haas, Peter M. 1989. Do regimes matter? epistemic communities and Mediterranean pollution control. International Organization 43 (3):377-403. On-line Readings.
Clark, William C., Ronald B. Mitchell, David W. Cash, and Frank Alcock. 2002. Information as influence: how institutions mediate the impact of scientific assessments on global environmental affairs. Faculty Research Working Paper RWP02-044. Cambridge, MA: Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. On-line Readings.
Lubchenco, Jane. 1998. Entering the century of the environment: a new social contract for science. Science 279:491-7. On-line Readings.
Vitousek, Peter M., Harold A. Mooney, Jane Lubchenco, and Jerry M. Melillo. 1997. Human domination of earth's ecosystems. Science 277 (5325):494-9. On-line Readings.
Kates, Robert W., William C. Clark, Robert Corell, J. Michael Hall, Carlo C. Jaeger, Ian Lowe, James J. McCarthy, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Bert Bolin, Nancy M. Dickson, Sylvie Faucheux, Gilberto C. Gallopin, Arnulf Grübler, Brian Huntley, Jill Jäger, Narpat S. Jodha, Roger E. Kasperson, Akin Mabogunje, Pamela Matson, Harold Mooney, Berrien Moore III, Timothy O'Riordan, and Uno Svedin. 2001. Sustainability Science. Science 292 (5517):641-2. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/292/5517/641?ijkey=MUU8kNHodD.22&keytype=ref&siteid=sci. On-line Readings.
World Commission on Environment & Development, "Towards Sustainable Development," in GPB ch. 23.
Larry Lohman, "Whose Common Future?" in GPB ch. 24.
Esty, Daniel C. 2001. A Term's Limits. Foreign Policy (126):74-5. On-line Readings.
Class discussion on writing the final paper and how to conduct a good causal evaluation of a treaty's influence. Re-read Mitchell and Bernauer from previous class session, think about causal questions and feedback from professor, and come in with questions prepared. This should help you prepare over the weekend for the next assignment of Outline and Graph of DV, and get started on your paper.
TREATY ASSIGNMENT #2: due beginning of class.
DeSombre, Ch. 5.
Paul Wapner, "Politics Beyond the State: Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics" in GPB ch. 12.
Chico Mendes, "Fight for the Forest," in GPB ch. 10.
Mary L. Barker and Dietrich Soyez, "Think Locally, Act Globally? The Transnationalization of Canadian Resource-Use Conflicts," in GPB ch. 11.
Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Peoples' Organizations of the Amazon Basin, "Two Agendas for Amazon Development," in GPB ch. 35.
DeSombre, Ch. 6.
Richard Benedick, "Ozone Diplomacy," in GPB ch. 13.
Anil Agarwal & Sunita Narain, "Global Warming in an Unequal World: A Case of Environmental Colonialism," in GPB ch. 16.
Conca & Dabelko, "The Earth Summit: Reflections on an Ambiguous Event," in GPB ch. 17.
Sprinz, Detlef and Tapani Vaahtoranta. 1994. The interest-based explanation of international environmental policy. International Organization 48 (1):77-105. On-line Readings.
DeSombre, Ch. 8.
Nancy Lee Peluso, "Coercing Conservation," in GPB ch. 36.
Ruth Bell, "Do International Environmental Agreements Really Work?" in GPB ch. 14.
Victor, David G. 1999. "Enforcing International Law: Implications for an Effective Global Warming Regime." Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum 10:1, 147-184. On-line Readings.
Mitchell, Ronald B. 2002b. A quantitative approach to evaluating international environmental regimes. Global Environmental Politics 2 (4):58-83. On-line Readings.
DISCUSSION PAPER: "Relative Effectiveness" due at beginning of class (< 1200 words – provide a word count): Compare the experience of the whaling and ozone protection regimes. Which regime has been more effective at influencing behavior? Which has been more effective at achieving its goals? What was the relative difficulty of the tasks the two regimes faced? In evaluating the relative effectiveness of these two conventions, which regimes accomplishments strike you as more impressive? If you see one regime as more effective than the other, to what do you attribute its success? If they were equally effective or ineffective, to what do you attribute the similarity in these outcomes?
DeSombre, Ch. 7 and review Ch. 6.
Peterson, M. J. 1992. Whalers, cetologists, environmentalists and the international management of whaling. International Organization 46 (1):147-86. On-line Readings.
Walsh, Virginia. 1999. Illegal Whaling for Humpbacks by the Soviet Union in the Antarctic, 1947-1972. Journal of Environment and Development 8 (3):307-27. On-line Readings.
Grundmann, Reiner. 1998. The strange success of the Montreal Protocol: why reductionist accounts fail. International Environmental Affairs 10 (3):197-220. On-line Readings.
Clapp, Jennifer. 1997. The Illegal CFC Trade: An Unexpected Wrinkle in the Ozone Protection Regime. International Environmental Affairs 9 (4):259-73. On-line Readings.
Online readings:
· Graph of Montreal Protocol CFC Consumption and requirements - On-line Readings.
· Graph of Whaling Convention quotas and kills - On-line Readings.
· International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling text - On-line Readings.
· International Whaling Commission Secretariat - On-line Readings.
· Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer text - On-line Readings.
· Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer text - On-line Readings.
· Ozone Secretariat - On-line Readings.
· Illegal Trade in Ozone Depleting Substances (UNEP 2001) - On-line Readings.
TREATY ASSIGNMENT #3: due beginning of class.
DeSombre, Ch. 3.
Thomas Homer-Dixon, "Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases," in GPB ch. 29.
United Nations Development Programme, "New Dimensions of Human Security" in GPB ch. 30.
Daniel Deudney, "The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security," in GPB ch. 31.
Somaya Saad, "For Whose Benefit? Redefining Security," in GPB ch. 32.
Pacific Institute list of water-related conflicts since 1500 AD: On-line Readings.
João Augusto de Araujo Castro, "Environment and Development: The Case of the Developing Countries," in GPB ch. 02.
Sharachchandra M. Lélé, "Sustainable Development: A Critical Review," in GPB ch. 25.
Tanvi Nagpal, "Voices from the Developing World: Progress Toward Sustainable Development," in GPB ch. 26.
Business Council for Sustainable Development, "The Business of Sustainable Development" in GPB ch. 27.
Alan Durning, "How Much is Enough?" in GPB ch. 28.
Mahathir Mohamed, "Statement to the UNCED," in GPB ch. 33.
Jagdish Bhagwati, "The Case for Free Trade," in GPB ch. 18.
Herman E. Daly, "The Perils of Free Trade" in GPB ch. 19.
International Institute for Sustainable Development, "Trade and Sustainable Development" in GPB ch. 20.
Vaughan, Scott. 2003. "The Greenest Trade Agreement Ever? Measuring the Environmental Impacts of Agricultural Liberalization." In NAFTA'S Promise and Reality: Lessons from Mexico for the Hemisphere, John Audley, Sandra Polaski, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, and Scott Vaughan (eds). Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 61-87. On-line Readings.
Logsdon, Jeanne M. and Bryan W. Husted. 2000. Mexico's
environmental performance under NAFTA: the first 5 years. Journal of Environment and Development 9 (4):370-83. On-line
Readings.
Also, skim the following:
Hufbauer, Gary Clyde, Daniel C. Esty, Diana Orejas, Luis Rubio, and Jeffrey J. Schott. 2000. NAFTA and the Environment: Seven Years Later. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. http://www.iie.com/publications/chapters_preview/322/iie2997.pdf.
Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America. 2002. The Environmental Effects of Free Trade: Papers Presented at the North American Symposium on Assessing the Linkages between Trade and Environment, October 2000. Montreal: Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America,. http://www.cec.org/files/PDF/ECONOMY/symposium-e.pdf.
Bruce Rich, "The Emperor's New Clothes: The World Bank and Environmental Reform," in GPB ch. 21.
Wilfredo Cruz, et. al., "Greening Development: Environmental Implications of Economic Policies," in GPB ch. 22.
Dubash, Navroz K. and Frances Seymour. 1999. The Political Economy of "Environmental Adjustment": The World Bank as Midwife of Forest Policy Reform. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. On-line Readings.
Gita Sen, "Women, Poverty, and Population: Issues for the Concerned Environmentalist," in GPB ch. 34.
Skim the State of the World Population report at: On-line Readings.
Also, follow up on some of the links provided at http://www.cnie.org/billion and be prepared to discuss issues of population raised in class. On-line Readings.
UNFCCC text: On-line Readings.
Kyoto Protocol text: On-line Readings.
UNFCCC Secretariat page: On-line Readings.
Readings for Climate Change Class: On-line Readings.
DeSombre, Ch. 10.
International Environmental Policy-Making and Transatlantic Co-operation On-line Readings.
FINAL PAPER DUE at the beginning of class on March 11th. NO LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED!