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The United States entered the 21st century actively pursuing a "go-it-alone" approach to international relations. This is especially the case in global environmental affairs, where the United States is now widely perceived as a laggard and even an obstacle to collective action. Yet, the United States was the prime proponent and creator of international environmental organizations in the 1970s. In this article, we analyze the U.S. role in global environmental governance from a historical perspective and present a platform for U.S. re-engagement. We contend that the new U.S. Administration should re-examine its strategy towards global environmental concerns and reinstate a commitment to multilateralism as well as to playing a leadership role.
There was a time when the United States led the way on international environmental cooperation. U.S. efforts were instrumental in launching the United Nations Environment Programme in 1972. President Richard Nixon pledged to contribute 40 percent of the $100 million that initially capitalized the Environment Fund, enabling the new organization's work. The United States was also the driving force behind the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (World Heritage Convention), the International Whaling Commission, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), and the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter (Ocean Dumping Convention). The United States also led the highly successful world effort to phase out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other chemicals threatening to the earth's protective ozone layer during the 1980s.
However, the United States has since retreated from its global environmental leadership role. The George W. Bush Administration has obstructed progress on a number of international environmental initiatives: protecting biodiversity, regulating the trade in genetically modified products, and instituting a legally binding treaty banning mercury. The high watermark-or perhaps the low tide-of U.S. obstructionism, however, came with the U.S. "unsigning" of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in 2001 and once more at the 2007 international climate negotiations in Bali, Indonesia. The only developed nation not having ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the United States was the main opponent in Bali to a proposal for greenhouse gas reductions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels. As the United States balked at...