State Soveriegnty And Environmental Sustainability Term paper

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State Sovereignty vs. Environmental Sustainability

With humanities growing knowledge of skills and technology, we have been able to

manipulate nature to meet the growing needs of humans. By doing this humans have

fished, gathered species, hunted for food, fuel, and shelter. Humans have domesticated

plants and animals, cut forests, used anything from fire to technological advancements to

alter habitats, and have significantly changes chemical hydrological and geochemical

cycles. As a result humans do not reflect what life on earth is, but changes to landscape

and sea reflect human culture. As species die, humans lose their food, medicines and

industrial resources and products that supply today for tomorrow. For humans to think

that they can be the last species standing and still survive is being ignorant of the facts .

This problem is of global concern and must be resolved with the cooperation of states,

NGO’s and the scientific community. Counties must realize that their sovereignty comes

second to the sustainable survival of not only the human race, but all of earth’s

encompassing life.

In the early 1400’s, human population began to grow substantially. The increase

in population added stress to earth’s resources and ecosystem which consistently increased

as humans developed new technologies. This period of technological enlightenment began

in the mid to late 1700’s with the industrial revolution, which was also the time when

humans moved out of self sustained villages and farms into complex interdependent cities.

Intensive industrialism started with the invention of the steam engine and ignited a mass

consumption of earth’s resources with developed countries consuming a majority of

resources and developing countries trying to catch up to the first world’s technological

ability and economic strength.

As third world countries try to compete with their flourishing neighbors, earth’s

natural resources have been stressed to an unsustainable level which poses two main

problems. Humans moving from rural to urban areas of the country allow people to use

resources that wouldn’t have been available if local sustainable lifestyles had been

maintained. And second, as the human population drastically increases, resources needed

per capita increases, consequentially adding stress on the environment. 1 As need for

resources increased, so did technologies in transportation, which allowed for extensive

logging in tropical rainforest. The degradation of such habitats continues to result in the

loss of an enormous amount of species. Scarcity of natural resources has posed a large

problem not only on the earth, but has created conflict among countries. Disagreements

according to the specific details of environmental problems and how to solve them have

created problems in international relations.

The intractable difference between all countries who express concern is their

sovereignty. “The dominant tradition within International Relations is state-centric,

centered around concepts of state sovereignty and the beliefs that states are the primary

actors in international affairs and that international affairs and international politics are

largely driven by states pressing their interest.”2 Environmental problems usually affect

more than one state and pose limitations on a states sovereignty. Let us take the example

of biodiversity. In 1992, nations gathered in Rio De Janeiro for the Earth Summit.

Several nations brought their environmental concerns including biological diversity to the

table , and over one hundred government representatives signed the Convention on

Biological Diversity.

Countries who sign an international convention may have full intentions of

carring out the purposed plan of action but once that moment of compliance comes, it

tends to be more difficult to comply than expected. Economic or technological

disadvantages may limit a countries capacity to comply with original goals set by the

treaty. Even if states sign the treaty it may take longer to implement due to

disagreements between differences in specific details. In the case of the Convention on

Biodiversity, there was a major split between the North and the South. The two issues

that divided the North and South were plant genetic diversity and intellectual property

rights.

The southern hemisphere provides a plethoric variety in genes among wild plant

species in comparison to the North. The second factor splitting the two hemispheres was

intellectual property rights which are legal ownership of inventions made by a state.

Basically the developing countries wanted to protect their rights and demanded money for

the exchange of genetic resources. States like Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia thought that

the resources are...

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