Environment in global politics

All over the world, the environment is getting worse: farmland is losing fertility, grasslands are overgrazed, fisheries are overfished, water is scarce and polluted, forests are cut down, and the ozone layer has thinned.

Why is this a matter of politics and not just science?

• No single government can fix it: pollution and climate cross borders.
• It raises political questions: who caused the damage, who should pay to fix it, and who decides?

How the environment came on to the world agenda:

At Rio, the rich North and the poor South came with different agendas:

• The North cared most about ozone depletion and global warming.
• The South wanted to talk about development and how to balance it with environmental care. It argued that the North had caused most of the damage while getting rich.

Rio's outcomes:

• conventions on climate change and biodiversity;
• Agenda 21, a list of practices for development that protects the environment;
• the idea of sustainable development: growth that meets today's needs without harming the ability of future generations to meet theirs.

Critics said Agenda 21 favoured growth over ecology, but Rio made the environment a central issue of world politics.