Jonathan Shanklin, one of the team who discovered the thinning ozone layer over the Antarctic 25 years ago, reflects on lessons learned from a tale of luck, public perception and fast environmental change.
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See ozone celebration at http://go.nature.com/2XzJCC .
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Shanklin, J. Reflections on the ozone hole. Nature 465, 34–35 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/465034a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/465034a
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Katie Moon
Jonathan Shanklin offered a comment on the success of international negotiations over the use of CFCs and the comparative failure of anthropocentric climate change negotiations. A concise framework offered by Tim O?Riordan (1995) may explain the success and failure of international action regarding these two global problems. He stated that for successful international negotiations, nations must first surrender their national sovereignty because ??the freedom to act as a sovereign state must be circumscribed by an obligation to respect the legitimate interests of other sovereign states? (O'Riordan 1995, p. 349). Second, there must be mutual advantage, whereby all nation states recognise that cooperation and compliance with a collective agreement is preferable to non-compliance of one or more states. Third, there must be an agreement that the effects of environmental change represent a credible threat, which is supported by accepted science, and that either individual or collective non-compliance is not in the interest of any nation. Fourth, there is a need for credible enforcement; and each nation must agree that compliance will be enforced and non-compliance penalised.
This framework can explain why international agreement was achieved in the case of ozone depletion, but why delays over climate change mitigation continue. For ozone depletion, no nation benefited if the hole in the ozone layer increased in size (mutual advantage), the science was mostly irrefutable (credible threat), and enforcement and penalisation mechanisms were realistic and involved industry cooperation (credible enforcement). In contrast, mutual advantage does not hold for anthropocentric climate change: it is expected that some nations will be less affected by climate change, while other nations, such as low lying tropical island nations, will be significantly affected. Moreover, scientific uncertainty (lack of an agreed credible threat) has provided an excuse for inaction. The differentiated responsibility of nations to act further complicates global cooperation. Understanding and working within O?Riordan?s framework may provide the ?new approach? that Shanklin is seeking to support international negotiations and ?to convince people to take action? (35).
O?Riordan, T. Environmental Science for Environmental Management. Longman Group Ltd. Essex, UK (1995).