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From Conflict and Insecurity to Cooperation and Peace?
Global ecological interdependence has uncertain implications for peace and conflict. Clearly, unchecked environmental degradation is not a recipe for social harmony. A large literature on environmentally induced conflict documents cases where environmental problems appear to play a role in triggering or exacerbating intergroup violence. As environmental degradation worsens, such cases are likely to become more common in occurrence and broader in scope.
But environmental problems also create incentives for cooperation and collective action. The past few decades have seen an explosion of international environmental agreements, ranging from narrow bilateral accords to ambitious attempts at global governance. We have also seen the deepening of linkages between national environmental bureaucracies, significant environmental reforms in many intergovernmental organizations, and an explosion of transnational networking among environmental organizations and social movement groups.
The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful comments of Matthew Auer, Charles Breiterman, Douglas Blum, Geoffrey Dabelko, Nils Petter Gleditsch, Allison Morrill, Marcus Schaper, Antoinette Sebastian, Ashok Swain, Larry Swatuk, Stacy Vandeveer, Erika Weinthal, Kenneth Wilkening, and three anonymous reviewers.
The cooperative potential surrounding environmental problems suggests that the discussion of environmentally induced conflict and ecological insecurity has overlooked what may be a critically important corollary. If environmental degradation can trigger violent conflict, then perhaps environmental cooperation can be an equally effective catalyst for reducing tensions, broadening cooperation, fostering demilitarization, and promoting peace. If so, then ecological interdependence could be seized upon as a catalyst for promoting peaceful cooperation and collective human security, and the availability of these benefits would become a powerful argument for intensified environmental cooperation.
Whether environmental cooperation can have such peace-enhancing effects is unclear, in part because what we know about environmental cooperation is largely divorced from considerations of peace, conflict, and security. A large and rapidly growing literature now exists on the conditions required for environmental cooperation. 1 But this literature has had little or nothing to say about linkages between environmental cooperation, peace, and conflict. Welfare gains, domestic and transnational political pressures, the strengthening of environmental norms, and the political use of knowledge are taken as the main instigators of cooperation, with little or no attention paid to the violence potential of environmental problems. Research on environmental cooperation has also had little or nothing to say about the consequences for peace or conflict. Much of the literature defines the 'effects' of such cooperation in a narrowly ecological sense ( Bernauer, 1995); when the dependent variable has included political effects, the main focus has been on domestic realignments or the apparatus of the state rather than interstate or transnational relations ( Young, 1999).
Similarly, research on environmental conflict has tended to skirt the issue of environmental cooperation. Studies of environmentally induced conflict typically end with generalized recommendations for environmental cooperation as a way to forestall such conflict. But this work nearly always lacks a careful analysis of the specific mechanisms required or of the pathways to the desired outcome of peaceful dispute resolution.
The growth of knowledge about environmental conflict and environmental cooperation as two separate and unconnected strands of inquiry has meant that important questions linking conflict and cooperation have gone unexamined. Does environmental cooperation in fact reduce the likelihood, scope, or severity of environmentally induced violence? Can the potential for environmentally induced conflict be an important spur to cooperation? Can environmental cooperation catalyze broader forms of peaceful interaction? If peace is thought of as a spectrum ranging from the absence of violent conflict to the inconceivability of such conflict, does environmental cooperation push states and societies further along that spectrum? We know that there are welfare gains and ecological benefits to be had from international environmental cooperation, but potential benefits in the form of reduced international tensions or an increasing improbability of violence have gone largely unexamined.
Given the lack of investigation, answers to whether environmental cooperation has positive spin-offs for peace remain conjectural. This chapter reviews several strands of scholarly research in international relations that suggest possible answers, or at least hypotheses: deductive and game-theoretic studies of the possibilities for cooperation under anarchy; empirical research on the implications of interdependence for international peace and conflict; studies of the process of interest formation and the role of norms in shaping perceptions of national interest; and research on the growing role of nonstate actors, transnational coalitions, and 'global civil society' as agents of governance. My reading of this literature suggests that there is, in fact, good reason to think that carefully designed initiatives for environmental cooperation can create specific, tangible political opportunities to build more broadly peaceful international relations. Environmental problems are certainly not the only opportunities to seek these gains, but they often have specific properties that make them a particularly rich set of opportunities.
In evaluating the deductive case for environmental peacemaking, two separate hypothesized pathways will be discussed. These are referred to as 'changing the strategic climate' and 'strengthening post-Westphalian governance'. 'Changing the strategic climate' refers to ways in which environmental cooperation might alter processes of strategic bargaining between governments, change the perceived costs and benefits that shape this bargaining, enhance confidence in the benefits of cooperation, or lessen prevailing barriers to collective action. At this level the discussion focuses in particular on realist models of interstate interaction, because the problem of peacemaking is most substantial under that set of assumptions. The second pathway, labeled 'strengthening post-Westphalian governance' refers to more broadly transformative effects, not only between governments but across societies. Here the emphasis is on ways in which environmental collaboration might affect the institutionalization of new norms of cooperation, alter state and societal institutions, or create or affect trans-societal linkages. It should be stressed that, in both cases, the idea of 'peace' actually consists of several dependent variables that might be affected by environmental cooperation. There are perceptual dimensions that include trust, certainty, and confidence; structural dimensions involving the costs and benefits from different forms of interaction and the institutional settings within which those costs and benefits are realized; and, at least in the second pathway, constitutive dimensions related to collective identity and the normative fabric within which those interactions occur.
Environmental cooperation does not occur easily or automatically. Serious conflicts of interest or perception often thwart cooperation, and difficult barriers to collective action remain even when interests and perceptions converge. Nor can it be claimed that all forms of environmental cooperation will have similar peace-enhancing effects; it is not difficult to identity counterexamples, such as the forcible creation of 'wilderness' through the expulsion of local or indigenous peoples ( Peluso, 1993; Guha, 1997; COICA, 1998). Rather, the argument is that environmental problems frequently have properties-ranging from technical complexity, uncertainty, and longer time horizons to the particular types of interdependencies they create--that may lend themselves to peace-enhancing types of cooperation. If so, then the link between environmental cooperation and peace becomes as important a topic for investigation as the link between environmental degradation and violence.
Environment, Conflict, and Insecurity
The 'ecological security' debate has overlapping empirical and normative components. As discussed elsewhere in this volume, empirically oriented work has focused primarily on environmental change as a potential cause of violent conflict. The findings of this work have been mixed. On the one hand, several cases have been identified in which natural resource depletion, ecosystem disruption, and other forms of environmental degradation appear to be linked to various types of intergroup conflict ( Homer-Dixon, 1994, 1999; Homer-Dixon and Percival, 1996; Bächler et al., 1996; Bächler , 1998). These studies suggest that environmental change is best understood as a potential catalyst for conflict rather than a sole or direct cause, triggering or exacerbating conflicts along existing social cleavages such as ethnicity, class, or region, and that these conflicts can in turn spill over to more widespread violence. Quantitative studies have provided some support for this hypothesis, although generally finding a stronger link to conflict for political and economic variables such as regime type, openness to international trade, or quality of life indicators than with environmental variables ( Hauge and Ellingsen, 2001; Esty et al., 1998). The long and complex causal chain, in which many steps are posited to lie between environmental cause and conflictual outcome, may explain why environment-conflict relationships have shown only weak or second-order associations.
Spurred in part by this research, a more explicitly normative debate has emerged on the question of whether and how to incorporate environmental 'threats' into security policies. This debate has been highly polarized between, one the one hand, traditionalists with an unreconstructed vision of national security, and on the other hand, more transformative approaches that advocate reorienting societal resources, delinking the idea of threats from specific enemies, and generally 'greening' and demilitarizing security discourse, policies, and institutions ( Dabelko and Dabelko, 1995). Both poles in this debate have been criticized as ambiguous, vague, and contradictory ( Deudney, 1990; Finger, 1991; Conca, 1994; Dalby, 1999). A narrow security-state frame of reference ignores the poor fit between military tools and environmental 'threats', the enormous ecological toll of war and war preparation, and the obstacles to effective environmental cooperation created by the zero-sum logic of the national-security state. The more transformative vision of environmental security has also been subjected to intense criticism. Critics point to a naive faith that 'engaging' security institutions on environmental matters will 'green' security policy rather than militarize environmental policy. There is also a troubling tendency to wield the concept of security in a way that is at once both vague and all-encompassing. The powerfully evocative but poorly specified concept of 'development', which has become a vehicle for so many contradictory agendas, offers a cautionary tale about this sort of terminological redefinition ( Escobar, 1995). And the specific pathways by which 'ecological security' will not only reduce environmental triggers of conflict but also transform the zero-sum logic of the national security state too often remain unclear or implicit.
What this debate has not provided is a clear strategy for environmental peace. Such a strategy would need to work on at least two different levels: It would have to create minimum levels of trust, transparency, and cooperative gains among governments strongly influenced by a zero-sum logic of national security, also laying the foundation for transforming dysfunctional institutions and practices reflecting a zero-sum logic of national security in directions conducive to peaceful coexistence and cooperation. Both tasks are necessary. Stabilizing intergovernmental relations without promoting institutional transformation runs the risk of merely reinforcing the zerosum, statist logic of national security while implementing short-term mitigation of environmental problems. On the other hand, seeking to transform institutions and ignoring the need for stable interstate relations risks being ineffective, irrelevant, and perhaps even counterproductive.
Can environmental cooperation have these peace-enhancing effects? Admittedly, such claims are difficult to test. One could measure environmental cooperation through participation in international environmental agreements and look for a correlation between such participation and peaceful international behavior. This could mean that environmental cooperation helps to build peace--but it could just as easily mean that peace is a prerequisite for environmental cooperation, not a result. Also, it is generally recognized that governments are willing to enter into formal international agreements when the costs of doing so are low, that many environmental accords lack significant binding power on states, and that many forms of environmental cooperation are not codified in formal agreements. These facts make readily available indicators such as ratification of environmental treaties or participation in international environmental regimes poor measures of meaningful cooperation (Downs, Rocke, and Barsoom, 1996).
Despite the difficulty of showing an empirical connection, there is a good deductive foundation for the idea that environmental collaboration can promote some of the conditions necessary for peace. The remainder of this chapter presents a review of several strands of the literature on cooperation theory, in an attempt to generate hypotheses about the peace-enhancing spin-offs of environmental collaboration. The chapter begins with the problem of changing the bargaining dynamic among governments and then shifts to the broader problem of institutional transformation and trans-societal relations.
Changing the Strategic Climate
According to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict ( 1997: 25)'Violent conflict results from choice--the choices of leaders and people--and is facilitated through the institutions that bind them'. The discussion that follows is by no means comprehensive in its treatment of the various factors that shape choice in a particular setting of interstate interaction. It focuses instead on selected dependent variables that may be affected by environmental cooperation, which in turn have been identified by various strands of cooperation theory as enhancing the prospects for peaceful interaction. These dependent variables include the properties of uncertainty surrounding interstate relations, the nature of reciprocity in actions between states, and the time horizon governments consider in their international dealings. Considering each of these potential leverage points in turn:
Reducing Uncertainty
Uncertainty is often a barrier to international cooperation. Keisuke Iida ( 1993) draws a useful distinction between two types of uncertainty, strategic and analytic. Strategic uncertainty exists because actors have incomplete information about each other's attributes, preferences, and intentions. Analytic uncertainty results from incomplete understandings of cause-andeffect relationships in a particular system, domain, or issue-area.
Neither analytic nor strategic certainty is always necessary for international cooperation, of course. Actors may perceive gains from cooperation despite very different causal understandings. And cooperation would rarely occur if it required full knowledge of the preferences and intentions of other actors. Nevertheless, uncertainty, conflicting understandings, and the knowledge struggles that result can be debilitating barriers to cooperation, for at least two reasons. First, opportunities for mutual gains from cooperation may go unidentified. Second, opponents of cooperation can use knowledge conflicts to cast aspersions on the motives of the other side, to argue for a wait-and-see stance in the face of uncertainty, or to offer vague proposals for further research as an alternative to concrete action. Disputes over the verifiability of arms-control agreements provide a classic example, with opponents of arms control invariably exploiting the uncertainty argument in all of these ways.
In the environmental realm, both strategic and analytic uncertainty are pervasive, and both have inhibited international cooperation. Analytic uncertainty surrounds the harmful effects of environmental problems, the severity of such harm, the impact of environmental policy measures, and even basic ecological cause-and-effect relations. These forms of uncertainty render the benefits of cooperation more difficult to demonstrate and provide a powerful tool for opponents of cooperation. The U.S. government used analytic uncertainty surrounding the causes and consequences of acid rain to delay action for more than a decade on Canadian claims of transboundary damage from acid precipitation ( Zehr, 1994). The Montreal Protocol 2 --widely hailed as one of the most successful environmental accords and touted as a model for international cooperation--required more than a decade to sort out conflicting knowledge claims about causal mechanisms in ozone depletion, the extensiveness of damage to the ozone layer, and the severity of human health consequences ( Haas, 1992; Litfin, 1995).
The effects of strategic uncertainty in inhibiting cooperation can be seen in the deep suspicions governments often voice about the hidden economic and political motives of actors with whom they disagree on specific environmental policy initiatives. The Montreal Protocol was nearly derailed by the mutual suspicions of U.S. and European negotiators that the other side's regulatory proposals were merely veiled efforts to create competitive economic advantage ( Benedick, 1998). Many Brazilians, including elements of the military, have dismissed international pressures to halt deforestation in the Amazon as merely the latest attempt to control development of Brazil's natural-resource wealth ( Conca, 1995a). Russian support for environmental protection in the Caucasus has been interpreted by the region's newly independent, post-Soviet states as an effort to slow the development of independent regional energy resources and part of a Russian bid for continued regional hegemony ( Blum, 1999).
The combination of strategic and analytic uncertainty can turn environmental policy debates into intensive knowledge struggles. The technical complexity, limited knowledge base, incomplete information, and inherent uncertainty surrounding an issue merge with suspicions about underlying intent--with the result being a political struggle over the definition of what is true. The international debate on climate change provides a good example: disagreement over the certainty of key scientific hypotheses has combined with deep suspicions about the motives of various actors on this high-stakes issue, resulting in an intensive knowledge struggle at the heart of the political debate. In this atmosphere of rival knowledge claims, even seemingly straightforward attempts to quantify the greenhouse-gas emissions of different countries can provoke an international furor over the best way to portray responsibility ( Agarwal and Narain, 1991 ; WRI, 1992: 209).
But the same uncertainty, technical complexity, and rival forms of knowledge that make environmental cooperation difficult may also provide opportunities to create new cooperative knowledge. Taking advantage of these collaborative opportunities might reduce both strategic and analytic uncertainty in ways that enhance the prospects for regional peace and security. With regard to analytic uncertainty, environmental collaboration often gives governments a better understanding of the extent of their economic and ecological ties. Environmental cooperation typically requires the pooling of national data to construct a larger transboundary or regional picture of the problem, creating opportunities for cooperative knowledge ventures. As cooperative knowledge deepens, new opportunities for mutual gain through cooperation are often revealed.
Asymmetries in information or in knowledge-generating capacities can also create opportunities for mutual gain. National science establishments are likely to have different levels of expertise across the various types of science that must be integrated to understand a particular problem; technological capabilities in environmental monitoring, testing, and data analysis are also likely to vary, usually in proportion to national scientific strength in a given field.
Environmental collaboration may also offer opportunities to reduce strategic uncertainty. When viewed in traditional security terms, environmental collaboration can provides governments with a relatively low-stakes arena in which to begin to establish a pattern of greater clarity and transparency regarding their interests and intentions. States in Northeast Asia, for example, have fallen into a pattern of regular consultations on regional environmental problems emphasizing regional collective goods, despite being unable to do so on traditional security concerns ( Schreurs and Pirages, 1999). Joint ventures in knowledge creation can institutionalize practices of information exchange, as well as making it harder to support accusations that science is being politicized for national gain.
Finally, there may be important synergies between reductions in analytic and strategic uncertainty. A deeper base of shared knowledge can enhance the ability of governments to monitor and verify, thereby increasing transparency and reducing suspicion. Conversely, these reductions in strategic uncertainty can support efforts to reduce analytic uncertainty, by making previously secret or sensitive information available to researchers, environmental advocates, and interest groups in society.
Promoting More Diffuse Forms of Reciprocity
Reciprocity can be defined as replying in kind to another's actions. There is substantial evidence that reciprocity is a key element of international cooperation. Drawing on insights from game theory, Robert Axelrod ( 1984) identified the reciprocal 'tit for tat' strategy--cooperating when the other party has cooperated, and defecting from cooperation when the other party has defected--as an effective way to promote cooperative behavior. (Questions remain about the robustness of this strategy across different payoff structures and settings; see Bendor and Swistak, 1997.) The value of this form of reciprocity is that it consistently alters the other party's incentives in the direction favoring cooperation, by rewarding cooperative behavior and retaliating against defections from cooperation. Without reciprocity, cooperative systems can easily break down when there are potential shortterm gains from cheating or otherwise abandoning cooperation.
The problem with reciprocity in international relations is that a shortage of political currency often limits cooperation to barterlike situations, in which reciprocity is immediate and direct. It can be very difficult to displace reciprocity across time, because mutual mistrust and suspicion often prevent governments from exchanging current actions for future promises. It also can prove difficult for governments to displace reciprocity across political space by linking separate issues, accepting as payment an action in a far-removed policy sphere. The difficulties many governments have faced when they seek to link trade relationships to progress on human rights or weapons proliferation provide examples.
The difficulty in creating these more diffuse forms of reciprocity can severely limit the number of opportunities for international political cooperation, just as a strict barter economy imposes drastic limits on the scope of potential economic transactions. As Robert Keohane ( 1984: 129) points out, what is needed is a form of political credit:
In purely simultaneous exchange, neither party has to accept obligations, rules, or principles, since the exchange is balanced at every moment. There is never a 'debt' or 'credit'. . . . This sort of perfectly balanced reciprocity provides an unsatisfactory basis for long-term relationships [in international relations].
Thus cooperation theorists have placed great importance on the idea of diffuse reciprocity--that is, reciprocating in ways that may be displaced in time or space--as a way to expand the number of situations in which cooperation can be sustained.
The potential value of environmental cooperation lies in the fact that it typically demands diffuse, but not too diffuse, forms of reciprocity. Specific environmental problems typically involve upstream/downstream relationships or other asymmetries in the distribution of responsibilities and consequences. Even in the classic case of a 'commons' or common property resource, it is rarely the case that all actors bear identical responsibility for environmental damage or that the resulting losses will be distributed in a purely symmetrical fashion. These asymmetries tend to create situations in which different actors bring very different types of goods to the bargaining table; the basis for cooperation tends to be more complex than simply asking each actor to contribute in the same way and to accept the same benefits.
Diffuse reciprocity is also common in environmental cooperation because the costs and benefits of cooperating tend to be displaced in time. Costs will typically be incurred in the short term so as to provide a future stream of benefits. Thus, even if the basis for cooperation is a simple transaction in which downstream victims purchase the compliance of upstream polluters, the transaction is more like a joint venture than a barter arrangement or cash payment for services rendered.
On the other hand, the varying actions demanded by shared environmental problems are not so diffuse as to make effective reciprocity impossible. Quite the contrary: when viewed not as isolated problems but rather as part of a set of regional ecosystemic relationships, pollution and environmental degradation offer many rich opportunities for reciprocity. On a regional scale, for example, actors are typically joined in many overlapping ecological interdependencies simultaneously, and states that are upstream in one case may well be downstream in another (as is often the case with states that share both watersheds and airsheds, for example). In other words, even though individual problems will often have a stark upstream/downstream character, who is upstream and who is downstream will vary substantially across the range of environmental problems joining particular states. This enhances the possibility of linking narrow sets of environmental problems into more robust, multidimensional commitments to environmental protection. In other words, governments contemplating environmental cooperation have little choice but to gamble on diffuse forms of reciprocity on specific issues--but in doing so they are likely to be able to take advantage of many potential counterbalancing linkages.
This combination may be an important difference between ecological and economic interdependence. The main instruments of economic interdependence are trade and foreign investment, each of which presents a different problem regarding reciprocity. Trade is reciprocal by definition, in that something of value is exchanged for something else of value. But tradebased interdependence is difficult to sustain both politically and economically if reciprocity becomes too diffuse. Large trade deficits can become sources of tension and discord, as U.S.-Japanese relations demonstrated in the 1980s. Stable trading relationships therefore tend toward direct and immediate, as opposed to more diffuse, forms of reciprocity. Foreign investment presents the opposite problem, in that reciprocity tends to be so diffuse as to produce widespread perceptions of no reciprocity at all. Governments may make tangible concessions on taxes, wages, or regulatory standards to attract foreign investment, in exchange for anticipated future benefits of employment, technology transfer, and multiplier effects. In other words, trade tends toward a form of reciprocity that is insufficiently diffuse to be a strong confidence builder, whereas foreign investment tends toward such diffuse forms of reciprocity as to raise questions about whether it is genuinely reciprocal at all.
The greater tendency toward diffuse reciprocity probably makes robust environmental cooperation more difficult to establish than trade-based interdependence. But it also suggests that effectively established environmental cooperation could provide important opportunities to institutionalize diffuse reciprocity--opportunities that may not be as abundant in economic forms of interdependence.
Lengthening the Shadow of the Future
It is widely accepted that international cooperation is more likely when actors perceive themselves to be part of an ongoing relationship that promises regular future benefits. It can be shown that a longer 'shadow of the future' can transform situations in which actors face seemingly intractable barriers to cooperation. In the classic metaphor of the so-called prisoners' dilemma, for example, it can be shown that the gains from cooperation can overcome the strong incentives for defection when actors see themselves as locked into regular future interaction with no end in sight ( Axelrod, 1984 ; Oye, 1986). The logic behind this observation is straightforward: The temptation to defect from cooperation becomes less if the stream of future benefits from cooperation becomes larger. The value of establishing and maintaining a cooperative reputation increases in settings where actors expect repeated interaction, because defections are likely to hurt future cooperation.
It is often argued that environmental diplomacy has been inhibited by the relatively short time horizon that most governments take into account; it has often been difficult to get actors with primarily short-term concerns of profit and power to focus on a longer-term agenda. An important corollary of this proposition may also be true, however--that environmental problems can be used as a way to shift the frame of reference from a series ofdisconnected, short-term interactions to a more continuous focus on a longer time horizon. A longer shadow of the future exists when actors pay more attention to the future, when they value it more relative to the present, and when they expect to engage in sustained interaction with one another. Environmental collaboration can affect all three of these dimensions in ways that may turn discrete and disconnected forms of interaction into ongoing relationships that promise regular future benefits.
One way in which environmental collaboration can lengthen the shadow of the future is simply by forcing actors to think about it. The buildup of environmental problems is often a creeping, incremental process, with the harmful consequences of environmental degradation often emerging in delayed and nonlinear fashion. Ecosystems may show few or no effects of change until their buffering capacities are depleted, with change difficult or impossible to reverse once these effects are unleashed. The incremental accumulation of effects and the danger of crossing irreversible thresholds can force actors to think in anticipatory ways and to frame policy responses in preventive terms. The payoff structure of most environmental problems also tends to shift actors toward a more forward-looking orientation. Rather than creating immediate and reciprocal benefits from exchange (as in the case of international trade), environmental cooperation tends to provide public goods that will pay a stream of future benefits on a joint investment made today.
A second way in which environmental collaboration can lengthen the shadow of the future is by changing society's discount rate. Environmental economists have made a persuasive case that the depletion of natural capital should be an explicit part of national income accounts ( WRI, 1998: 191-193). Environmental ethicists have raised an analogous point about the impact of environmental degradation and resource depletion on the rights and opportunities of future generations ( Weiss, 1989; Rothenberg, 1993).
Finally, environmental collaboration can lengthen the shadow of the future if it establishes particularly dynamic forms of cooperation that promote long-term relationships and sustained interaction. Effective environmental management is information-intensive; it demands that data be collected, exchanged, and interpreted on a regular basis. The uncertainty surrounding many environmental problems can lead to innovative institutional practices that promote ongoing relationships. The international bargaining over the problem of ozone-layer depletion, for example, dealt with the problem of uncertainty and a changing knowledge base by formalizing a requirement to revisit the accord's provisions in light of new findings ( Weiss, 1998). This commitment created a dynamic process that kept governments focused on the issue and strengthened the agreement over time.
Strengthening Post-Westphalian Governance
The discussion thus far, in its heavy reliance on interstate cooperation theory, has been grounded in a fairly traditional international-relations perspective that assumes the centrality of governments, the separateness of societies, the fixed character of national interests, and the rationality of choice. These assumptions take as fixed several key properties of the international system: the territorially sovereign character of states, the consolidated national identity of their peoples, and the hegemony of authoritative governments as the dominant behavioral agents.
Yet a growing body of research has shown this frame of reference to be, at best, incomplete. The dominant trend in contemporary international relations theory is to expose these allegedly fixed properties of sovereignty, territoriality, national identity, and governmental authority as fragmented, incomplete, and often tenuous social constructions--the reproduction of which is never easy, often violent, and in many cases becoming more difficult ( Biersteker and Weber, 1996; Kuehls, 1996). Research on migration processes, gender dynamics, and indigenous peoples reveal national identity to be not a fixed and immutable property of national populations, but rather a constructed and often tenuous mechanism of social control ( Heisler, 2000; Tickner, 1993; Wilmer, 1993). Studies of intervention and postcolonialism have exposed the contingent, partial, and fragmented character of state sovereignty ( Weber, 1995; Doty, 1996; Inayatullah and Blaney, 1996). Research on the role of advocacy networks, international knowledge communities, and transnational social movements challenges the notion that states are the preponderant actors in international relations ( Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Lipschutz and Conca, 1993; Wapner, 1996). Even the fixed, essential character of territory becomes questionable in a world of border-straddling ecosystems, transboundary pollutant flows, and deterritorialized global commons ( Kuehls, 1996). In such a world, to stake environmental peace on strategic bargaining among governments is to make increasingly unwarranted assumptions about their ability to deliver.
A second problem with a narrow frame of reference on the unified state as rational chooser is that states themselves are often at the heart of the problem of insecurity (ecological or otherwise). Just as territory, national identity, authoritative government, or sovereignty cannot be viewed statically, as the fixed properties of states, anarchy cannot be understood as a fixed property of the international system ( Ruggie, 1983). Far from being an immutable fact of international life that justifies militarized responses to the inevitable security dilemma, anarchy is, to quote Alexander Wendt ( 1992), 'what states make of it'. And what modern states have too often made of it is a domain of violence and insecurity that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in interstate dealings and a justification for violence and repression in the domestic sphere. If so, it is not enough to render unreconstructed national security states less wary and suspicious of one another, important though that task may be. A broader transformation of the zerosum logic of the security state itself is also required. This means transforming institutions of governance and forging healthier, cooperative trans-societal relationships.
In other words, in this formulation the focus shifts away from the perceptions of state elites and the structure of their interactive games to focus instead on the constitutive character of states, the normative fabric of international life, and the increasingly dense array of trans-societal linkages. Does environmental cooperation soften rigidly exclusionary and narrowly territorial notions of sovereignty that stress states' rights over their responsibilities? Can environmental cooperation create the political "space" for new types of political mobilization with implications for personal and group identities that transcend national loyalties?' ( Hayes and Zarsky, 1994). Does environmental cooperation push governments in the direction of more legitimate, open, and accountable forms of authority? Clearly, the answers to these questions will be contingent on the specific form that environmental cooperation takes. One can imagine initiatives that have the effect of softening sovereignty, transnationalizing identity, and democratizing governance, just as one can imagine initiatives that have the opposite effect.
The question of system transformation raises a series of theoretical and empirical challenges that lie far beyond the scope of this chapter, and perhaps beyond the grasp of current knowledge. The discussion that follows, therefore, is quite preliminary and by no means comprehensive. It examines four mechanisms by which certain forms of environmental cooperation might push an important dependent variable in a post-Westphalian direction. These mechanisms include the creation of new forms of interdependence, the fostering of new norms, the deepening of transnational civil society, and the transformation of governmental institutions in the direction of greater transparency and democratic accountability.
Creating New Forms of Interdependence
It is close to an article of faith among liberal theorists of international relations that interdependence is a force for peace and stability in world politics. John Oneal and Bruce Russett ( 1997) summarize the classic liberal argument, first articulated by Emeric Cruce in the early seventeenth century: 'Trade created common interests and increased the prosperity and political power of the peaceful, productive members of society. This statement reflects the emphasis on economic forms of interdependence, and trade in particular, that pervades the theoretical literature on interdependence. It also illustrates that the link between interdependence and peace has traditionally been based on two arguments. First, interdependence is said to create opportunities for mutual gain across national borders. This, it is argued, gives states a stake in peaceful cooperation and raises the costs of war to an unacceptable level.
The second and more transformative part of the interdependence argument involves domestic politics, with interdependence said to broaden and decentralize the distribution of power in society. According to the original formulation of the interdependence model by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye ( 1977), a key property of interdependence politics is that interstate interaction occurs across multiple channels, with various domestic subgroups and transnational actors (businesses, bureaucratic organs of the state, interest groups, and so on) playing an increasingly important role in shaping national policies. The claim that interdependence promotes peace assumes that these actors will use their rising political influence to prevent the disruption of these transnational ties, at the same time reducing the danger that foreign policy is controlled by a 'warrior class' in society.
More recently, a third argument has been added, that interdependence is a structural determinant of international cooperation. Motoshi Suzuki ( 1994) presents evidence that higher levels of interdependence make it easier for states to balance the relative-gains strategies of states seeking a disproportionate advantage. If so then the tendency to value relative gains over absolute gains should attenuate as the level of interdependence increases, removing an important impediment to cooperation.
Efforts to demonstrate a link between interdependence and peace have focused overwhelmingly on economic forms of interdependence and, within that domain, primarily on international trade. Susan McMillan ( 1997) identified twenty studies testing the claim that interdependence, measured in terms of trade, inhibited violent conflict. She found that a majority of these studies supported the hypothesis. In a broad review of the literature, Oneal and Bruce Russett ( 1997) found fairly strong evidence to support the trade/peace hypothesis. They identified several studies showing that the importance of trade to a country's economy is inversely proportional to involvement in international conflict or a propensity to initiate war. They also point to evidence of the particularly pacifying effects of trade among contiguous states (where conflict is generally most frequent); that trade appears to inhibit militarized disputes even when controlling for the fact that conflict patterns and expectations about conflict may shape the growth of trade flows; and that both trade relationships and economic openness are strongly associated with peace in dyadic relationships among contiguous states or involving great powers (the cases most likely to lead to war), even when controlling for a wide range of potential confounders such as alliances or regime type. Ranveig Gissinger and Nils Petter Gleditsch ( 1999) find more complex effects of an open economy, with higher levels of trade associated with domestic peace but also with effects of income inequality that can lead to political instability in poorer countries.
But what of ecological interdependence? Obviously, environmental problems themselves constitute a form of interdependence: In a world where pollution respects no borders, states are increasingly sensitive and vulnerable to each other's polluting activities. One could argue that, to the extent that it reduces these mutual sensitivities and vulnerabilities, environmental cooperation constitutes a lessening of interdependence. But a more important effect of environmental cooperation may be to create important and potentially powerful new interests supporting transnational cooperative arrangements. Business interests coalesce around the provision of environmental technologies, clean-up services, monitoring, and so on. Nongovernmental organizations evolve from pressure groups into supporters of, and even participants in, international agreements, in some cases even taking on the role of service providers or data collectors. Transnational NGO networks established around a particular problem can deepen and broaden their ties by tackling new issues. The result is to create a new set of stakeholders in continued cooperation, much as the trade-based interdependence model envisions exporters in country A and importers in country B forming a transnational coalition for peaceful relations. One way this process might work is through the process of 'tote-board diplomacy' described by Levy ( 1993) in the case of Europe's Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution Convention. 3 Rather than creating strong and binding rules, LRTAP emphasized consensus building on sources of the problem. This created informational resources that could be used to generate not only external but also domestic pressure on noncomplying or nonparticipating states.
A second potentially important effect of environmental collaboration is that it can galvanize a domestic base of support very different from the typical coalition of actors supporting economic interdependence. The polarizing effects of economic globalization have created broad constituencies, across a wide range of societies and ideological stances, that are increasingly wary of the toll of economic interdependence on community, employment, and democracy ( Broad and Cavanagh, 1999; Markoff, 1999). The result of these concerns is a growing transnational coalition opposed to the particular form of interdependence at the heart of the liberal internationalist agenda, namely international trade and investment.
Under these circumstances collaboration may provide an important political opportunity to change or balance the form that interdependence takes and broaden the coalition in support of it. In domestic political terms, therefore, one of the crucial questions is the nature of the constituency engaged by emerging forms of environmental cooperation. More generally, it is crucial to map the linkages between emerging patterns of ecological and economic interdependence at a time when both are deepening.
Fostering New Norms
Relations of peace or conflict are embedded not only in material circumstances but also through internalized norms. Martha Finnemore ( 1996) identifies and traces a historical process of social construction in the definition of 'national interests' (see also Katzenstein, 1996; Risse-Kappen, 1995). Behavioral norms, or 'shared expectations about appropriate behavior', are part of an international structure of 'meaning and social value' that helps states determine their interests:
States do not always know what they want. They and the people in them develop perceptions of interest and understandings of desirable behavior from social interactions with others in the world they inhabit. States are socialized to accept certain preferences and expectations by the international society in which they and the people who compose them live. ( Finnemore, 1996: 128)
One of Finnemore's historical case studies, focused on the International Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions, reveals war as a 'highly regulated social institution whose rules have changed over time' (1996: 69)--illustrating that socialization mechanisms are at work even on matters related to the high politics of violent conflict and state survival.
Emanuel Adler ( 1997) has argued that norms related to peace and conflict can be internalized at the supranational level. Building on Karl Deutsch's concept of a 'pluralistic security community' and Benedict Anderson's concept of the nation as an 'imagined community', Adler argues that we are seeing the emergence of new identity constructs whose borders are defined not by territorial state boundaries but rather by shared norms of peaceful conflict resolution and 'dependable expectations of peaceful change' ( Adler, 1997: 255 ; see also Adler and Barnett, 1996 ).
The question is whether environmental cooperation can help to spur these processes of national socialization and transnational communitybuilding. One potential avenue is through evolving practices and norms of sovereignty ( Conca, 1995b). Karen Litfin ( 1997) suggests that responses to environmental problems contribute to the 'reconfiguration' of sovereignty by reworking norms of state autonomy and state legitimacy. One possible pathway to such reconfiguration is through renewed emphasis not just on state rights but also state responsibilities embedded in the principle of sovereignty ( Wapner, 1998). Another avenue may be a norm of the environment as the 'common heritage' of humanity ( Weiss, 1989). Although much of the discussion in this domain has been at the global level in the sense of focusing on an ethic of planetary responsibility, there may also be effects at the regional level if such norms translate into a 'good neighbor' ethic.
Asking whether environmental cooperation fosters such normative changes means examining several possible pathways. Finnemore ( 1996: 3), though not focusing specifically on environmental issues, stresses the role of intergovernmental organizations as agents that 'socialize states to accept new political goals and new values'. Peter Haas and Ernst Haas (1995; see also Haas, 1991) also focus on intergovernmental organizations, in this case as laboratories for the development of effective knowledge-based adaptations through processes of organizational learning. Stacy VanDeveer and Geoffrey Dabelko ( 1999), examining Baltic environmental cooperation, point to a process in which transnational norms related to environmental protection become codified through national environmental legislation. Paul Wapner ( 1996), in a study of transnational environmental advocacy organizations, stresses a different pathway, grounded in the dissemination of an 'ecological sensibility' across an everwider swath of society.
Alternately, it may be these various forms of environmental institutionalization are best understood as effect rather than cause; John Meyer ( 1997) and other 'world-society' theorists have suggested that the proliferation of international environmental institutions is the expression of the globalization of underlying norms of Western scientific rationalism and Weberian bureaucratic administration. Moreover, one can readily imagine forms of international environmental cooperation that reproduce and rigidify traditional norms of sovereign separateness. Perhaps one of the best indicators in this regard is whether cooperation is restricted to the traditionally 'international' domain of transboundary pollutant flows and transnational commons issues, or whether it also develops to the point of embracing questions of local/domestic resource management and incorporating a more holistic perspective of integrated ecosystems, natural cycles, and environmental services.
Building Transnational Civil Society
Along with a few other issue areas--notably including human rights, grassroots development, the status of women--environmental problems have been at the forefront of arguments that we are seeing the emergence of a transnational or even global civil society ( Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Lipschutz , 1992, 1996; Potter, 1996; Princen and Finger, 1994; Wapner, 1995, 1996). This perspective is rooted primarily in liberal democratic theory, which presumes that a myriad of social, cultural, and other forms of collective interaction are an important counterbalance to the concentrated power of state and market institutions in society. Scholars applying the concept of civil society to the transnational sphere have stressed as driving forces the effects of economic globalization, the communications revolution, and the deepening of state authority crises in the face of challenges such as environmental degradation. The result of these processes has been to create a thinly institutionalized but growing transnational civil society, manifest primarily as networks linking local nongovernmental organizations and social-movement groups with genuinely transnational, 'sovereignty-free' actors ( Rosenau , 1990).
The potential significance of these transnational networks is twofold. First, they can greatly empower previously marginalized groups to have a voice in policy decisions, in both domestic and international fora. For local community organizations struggling against problems as diverse as the construction of large dams, the destruction of forests, or the stripping away of traditional land rights, transnational networking has been an increasingly important resource for community empowerment. These changes in power relations can provoke social conflict and violence, to be sure. But as resource use intensifies and environmental degradation worsens, creating space for the disparate and dissident voices of stakeholders is increasingly acknowledged as a prerequisite for effective international cooperation ( Susskind, 1994).
A second peacemaking effect of transnational networks may lie in the realm of identity. As Adler suggests, 'There is much evidence in the social psychology literature that cooperative behavior between individuals is mediated by the perception of membership in a common category' ( Adler, 1997: 264 ; see also Kelman, 1997). If a common category is to be forged embracing principles of sustainability and shared responsibility, it seems at least as likely to emerge from trans-societal linkages as from interstate bargaining. Wapner ( 1996) argues that transnational environmental organizations are important international political actors because of their capacity to go around, above, or below the state to shape directly the values, preferences, and collective choice mechanisms of large numbers of people.
Whether the result is also to loosen the traditional moorings of political identity remains unclear. James Rosenau ( 1990) refers to a 'skill revolution' in world politics at the level of the individual, leading more people to assess governmental legitimacy in terms of governmental performance--thereby creating crises of authority for many if not most governments. It is also not clear whether newly emergent identity formations move in the direction of shared interests and responsibilities across borders. As Larry Swatuk ( 1997: 128) suggests in the context of Southern Africa, a wide range of differing identity constructs may emerge from such crises of the state:
The feelings of alienation from and abandonment by the state on the part of the majority of the region's peoples, exacerbated in some cases by the negative impacts of structural adjustment, have given rise to sub- and supra-national redefinitions of 'security' and 'community': from Islam and ethnicity to crime networks and cooperatives.
Transforming State Institutions
It was argued above that states are often part of the problem of violence and insecurity, in that they tend to internalize norms of secrecy, separateness, and conflictual zero-sum relations. Thus one of the key questions about environmental peacemaking is whether environmental cooperation fosters the transformation of the state, and in particular of military institutions, away from these orientations.
Environmental issues offer many opportunities to engage traditional security institutions in new forms of cooperation. The military and intelligence organs of the state often wield assets in the form of technology, expertise, and information that can be useful in addressing environmental problems. In many settings the quest for a post-Cold War mandate has left security institutions open to at least discuss new missions and budgetary justifications. And the drumbeat of concern about environmentally induced conflict has placed environmental issues on the military agenda in a wide range of settings.
Some advocates of 'environmental security' have suggested that these opportunities can be seized upon to break down the culture of secrecy that pervades interstate relations in the security domain (see for example Stern, 1999). Drawing security institutions into environmental discussions may institutionalize new norms of information sharing, institutional accountability, and cooperation, while making such practices less mysterious and threatening to the institutions themselves. Kent Butts ( 1999), for example, points to the reformist value of military-to-military ties dealing with environmental themes. Others have argued that a more likely outcome is the militarization of environmental policy under the guise of greening security policy ( Deudney, 1990; Finger, 1991; Conca, 1994).
The U.S. experience with efforts to redirect spy satellite activities toward environmental monitoring illustrates both the potential and the obstacles of this high-stakes game of institutional transformation. As Litfin ( 1998: 196-197) suggests,
Military agencies still control the lion's share of high resolution satellite imagery and are reluctant to share it with others. As the militaries of the Cold War superpowers come under pressure to redefine their mission in a post-Cold War era, they have become involved in environmental research. For decades, the security forces of both superpowers did a good deal of inadvertent environmental research, which scientists are now eager to acquire.
In a study of the U.S. experience, Ronald Diebert ( 1996: 29) remains skeptical about institutional transformation:
Despite the intuitive appeal of this logic . . . the actual scope of the refocusing that has occurred has been relatively small. While gathering momentum with each successive year, the deeply pervasive secrecy of U.S. intelligence agencies guarantees that any potential mission adjustments or 'outside' intrusions into intelligence activities and priorities are met with a blanket of suspicion and institutional inertia.
Diebert also describes a trend toward the merging of environmental and military reconnaissance systems under a single umbrella, as in the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office or in Brazil's $1.4 billion Amazonian surveillance system, raising troubling questions of institutional and informational control (see also Conca, 1997).
Conclusion
There are no guarantees that international environmental cooperation will continue to expand at either the global or regional level, nor can it be said that such cooperation will automatically spill over to promote broader forms of peace and comprehensive security. But there is a theoretical foundation for the claim that environmental cooperation can promote and enhance peace. In the short run, environmental cooperation could create positive externalities for international peace and human security by improving the climate of strategic interaction and political bargaining. In the long run, it could be an important way to strengthen the institutionalization of postWestphalian forms of governance, by creating new norms, deepening and broadening positive transnational linkages, deepening the development of international civil society, and transforming institutions of the security state. At the very least, there may be a link between environmental cooperation and peaceful international relations that is at least as strong as the link between environmental degradation and violent conflict. 4
This premise harkens back to ideas of the early post-World War II era, including the claims of so-called 'functionalists' such as David Mitrany and integration theorists such as Karl Deutsch. Mitrany argued that the growth of routine international cooperation would gradually promote cooperation in ever more conflictual areas; 'low politics' would gradually intrude on the domain of 'high politics' ( Mitrany, 1966, 1976; Haas, 1964). Deutsch ( 1952, 1963) argued that an increase in international transactions would produce an increase in value compatibility and mutual trust across societies, resulting in support for closer ties and, eventually, political integration (see also Deutsch et al., 1957; Inglehart et al., 1996).
Critics suggested that these claims were naive, citing as evidence the limits to East-West cooperation during the Cold War. Daniel Deudney ( 1993: 285) describes a common criticism of Mitrany's functionalist view:
Realist critics claim that states which were antagonists in high politics would not allow extensive low politics collaboration. Indeed, the realists argued, the spillover occurred in the opposite direction to that predicted by Mitrany: economic and welfare collaboration would be retarded by high politics conflict between states. Mitrany was 'unrealistic' to think that economics and welfare would ever be allowed to operate autonomously of the high political sphere. Thus the low politics of collaboration between long-time antagonists France and Germany after World War II presupposed the American-led military unification of Western Europe. And the high political conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union greatly impeded substantial welfare and economic collaboration between the blocs.
The same process may inhibit environmental peacemaking. In other words, the very problems of suspicion, mistrust, and uncertainty that environmental cooperation is meant to overcome may serve to inhibit environmental cooperation in the first place. Lothar Brock ( 1991: 414) surmises that 'At present, ecological cooperation is a dependent variable that reflects the state of overall relations more than it influences these relations'.
Nevertheless, there are at least two rejoinders to these pessimistic conclusions. First, as Deudney and others have suggested, it may be that functionalism was dismissed too soon. Environmental problems may be the first test case in which the stakes are high enough and the logic of cooperation strong enough to promote the sort of positive, cooperative spillover that Mitrany envisioned. Unlike the coordination of international postal service or air-traffic control, environmental problems may be serious enough to compel governments to take greater chances on international cooperation--even when an overarching security logic for cooperation, such as that which facilitated European integration, is absent. Second, the ideological and strategic hostility of the Cold War probably represents an extreme case. To dismiss environmental confidence building because it failed to end the Cold War--or for that matter, because it cannot transform relations between Israel and Palestine or India and Pakistan--would be to let shortterm evidence from a few particularly hard cases cause us to abandon prematurely a useful strategy for enhancing peace. Both on a global scale and in regions as diverse as post-Cold WarNortheast Asia, postrevolutionary Central America, postapartheid Southern Africa, and post-Soviet Central Europe, states and societies are in the process of sorting out new security relationships in the wake of a particularly turbulent period of change. Where they are not locked into patterns of confrontation and conflict, but rather groping toward new relationships under conditions of great uncertainty about the future, the catalytic potential of environmental cooperation may be more apparent and more substantial.
Whether environmental problems lead to widespread violence or anticipatory initiatives to create cooperative, comprehensive, human security depends on several factors. These include the rate, distribution, and intensity of transnational environmental degradation; the perceptions actors hold of the problems and opportunities inherent in environmental change; and the ability of governments and other actors to design effective institutions that overcome barriers to cooperation. But it will also depend on our ability and willingness to seize upon the inescapable fact of our ecological interdependence as a catalyst for building a more peaceful international order.
© 2008 Climate Security Project