• A Critical Review of the Successful CFC Phaseout and the Delayed Methyl Bromide Phaseout in the Montreal Protocol

ABSTRACT The Montreal Protocol is often described as an international environmental agreement par excellence. After all, it successfully led to the phase-out of almost 95% of all chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) use. A critical review of the Protocol’s history, however, suggests that its successes are deeply entrenched in the economic opportunities that were made available to phase out CFCs. The Montreal Protocol, in other words, was a “best-case scenario” for CFC producers. This may be problematic for policymakers, ecological modernization practitioners, and other scholars who look to the Montreal Protocol for guidance in phasing out other global environmentally harmful substances and practices that are not as “economically efficient.” The shift to delay the phasing out of methyl bromide (MeBr) in the Protocol, an ozone-depleting substance used to this day primarily in strawberry and tomato production, demonstrates how even this most successful of international environmental agreements can become subject to significant setbacks when economic gains and scientific evidence are not obvious to the global powers. Furthermore, changes in what constitutes a viable exemption to the phase-out of CFCs versus MeBr marks a shift away from concern for the general functioning/welfare of society, and toward concern for the market performance of specific individuals. This shift runs parallel to a lack in economic incentives to phase out MeBr in the United States. The article demonstrates how civil society representation in ozone politics is largely dominated by industry interests, especially when scientific uncertainty is high.

By Brian J. Gareau

Email author for electronic version of this paper: bgareau@gmail.com

• From Public to Private Global Environmental Governance: Lessons from the Montreal Protocol’s Stalled Methyl Bromide Phase-out

By Brian J. Gareau and E. Melanie DuPuis

Email authors for electronic version of this paper: bgareau@gmail.com

ABSTRACT The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, a multilateral environmental agreement, has successfully eliminated the use of most ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). As a result, a number of observers have pointed to the possibility of transferring successes – and even linking regulations – between the Montreal Protocol and Kyoto Protocol, the international but stalled climate change agreement. We argue that there is the need for caution on this issue. The Montreal and Kyoto protocols are the outcomes of vastly different political contexts, from public civil society approaches to what we call “the private turn”: the current loss of faith in state sovereignty, the rejection of multilateralism, and an embrace of private knowledge about economic damage over public knowledge about the protection of citizens and natural resources. From this broader perspective, we show that the differences between the Montreal and Kyoto protocols are therefore more than “command-and-control” versus “market-based” solutions. These differences also reflect an even deeper divide over what “counts” as knowledge in political decision-making processes. We illustrate these points through a case study of the current knowledge controversies around the phase-out of methyl bromide under the Montreal Protocol.  We explain how the methyl bromide phase-out is stalled because the phase-out approach is incompatible with the current political regime, thus supporting the argument that neoliberal forms of governance cannot solve global environmental problems. This case, therefore, shows us that the challenges we face are more than atmospheric: to save the Earth we must create new ways to govern ourselves.

• Review of E. Diaz-Bonilla et al.’s WTO Negotiations and Agricultural Trade Liberalization: The Effect of Developed Countries’ Policies on Developing Countries

By: Brian J. Gareau

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Diaz-Bonilla et al. Review

• Dangerous Holes in Global Environmental Governance: The Roles of Neoliberal Discourse, Science, and California Agriculture in the Montreal Protocol

By: Brian J. Gareau

ABSTRACT The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is a global environmental treaty that commits all signatories to strict schedules for the decline in the use of ozone-depleting substances, including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and methyl bromide (MeBr). The successful phase-out of CFCs under the protocol prompted analysts to declare it to be the most successful example of global environmental governance in existence. The current phase-out of MeBr, however, has been greatly delayed, prompting significant criticism from environmental advocates, national governments, and members of the scientific community. “Critical Use Exemptions” (CUEs) to the MeBr phase-out, granted mainly to strawberry and tomato growers in the US, have led to a great deal of controversy at the protocol. Using empirical data gathered while attending Montreal Protocol meetings from 2003-2006, this dissertation explores the MeBr controversy, illustrating how the stalled MeBr phase-out involves interconnections between geopolitics, agro-industry, and scientific knowledge. I obtained information for the case study from several sources: 1) in-depth and informal interviews; 2) direct observation, and; 3) historical and archival research. From 2003 to 2006, I attended each of the annual “Meetings of the Parties” (MOP), the two “Extraordinary Meetings,” and the annual “Open-ended Working Group” (OEWG) meetings of the Montreal Protocol as an “Observer.” The dissertation shows how neoliberalism, as a dominant discourse and economic practice, has become embedded in the protocol, and how the US is able to act protectionist amid that discourse. The dissertation, however, also demonstrates how the MeBr controversy involves much more than just economic protectionism per se; it also involves the protection of the legitimacy of US science. While the global community pushes for acknowledgement of global scientific knowledge on the alternatives to MeBr, US actors stress the primacy of US scientific knowledge. Therefore, while the US is indeed determined to protect its economic interests, the MeBr case shows how it is perhaps just as keen on protecting the legitimacy of its scientific knowledge base as the spokesperson for global science/knowledge on MeBr and its alternatives. The dissertation illustrates how global civil society groups involved in the protocol are affected by the neoliberal discourse, which has left them relatively ineffective in reversing the CUE process.

All Images and Content Copyright Brian J. Gareau 2009 – All Rights Reserved

• Neoliberal Knowledge: The Decline of Technocracy and the Weakening of the Montreal Protocol

By: E. Melanie DuPuis and Brian J. Gareau

Download: DuPuis.Gareau.SSQU_576.2008

ABSTRACT Objective. The turn to participatory, stakeholder modes of governance has been accompanied by the legitimization of a new ‘‘particularist knowledge regime” emphasizing the knowledge claims made by private interests and local voices. It has also tended to de-legitimize the ways of knowing that had characterized central state governance, namely, state expertise based on general welfare analytics such as cost-benefit analysis. This turn away from state expertise, what we call the ‘‘anti-technocratic consensus,” while stemming from democratic motivations, may actually make environmental governance less democratic. Method. We examine the problems that arise from the abandonment of general welfare economic analytics and technical expertise-the anti-technocratic consensus-through a specific case study: the recent handling of ‘‘critical use exemptions” to the ban on methyl bromide under the Montreal Protocol, a treaty that mandates the elimination of methyl bromide in order to protect the ozone layer. We show that decisionmakers specifically rejected general welfare analytics as a basis of regulatory action in favor of a particularist form of analytics based on measuring market disruption. Results. This case illustrate how the de-legitimization of technical expertise can weaken the effectiveness of an environmental agreement in meeting its regulatory mandate. Critics have often criticized technical expertise as supporting the economic status quo. However, in the case of methyl bromide and the Montreal Protocol, technical experts using general welfare analytics represented a challenge to U.S. regulatory officials who supported industrial interests and their request for significant exemptions to the ban. Conclusion. The legitimization of a particularist knowledge regime opens up policy making to domination by private interests playing the stakeholder game. Stakeholder input and particularist knowledges are important to democratic decision making. However, technical expertise, despite all its weaknesses, is a form of knowledge that remains necessary to the protection of the environment and public health.

• Dangerous Holes in Global Environmental Governance: The Roles of Neoliberal Discourse, Science, and California Agriculture in the Montreal Protocol

By: Brian J. Gareau

Download: Gareau.Antipode.40.1.2008

ABSTRACT This paper explores how a relatively successful global environmental treaty, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, is currently undermined by US protectionism. At the “global scale” of environmental governance, powerful nation-states like the US prolong their domination of certain economic sectors with the assistance of neoliberal discourse.Using empirical data gathered while attending Montreal Protocol meetings from 2003 to 2006, I show how US policy undermines the Montreal Protocol’s mandate to phase out methyl bromide (MeBr). At the global scale of environmental governance the US uses a discourse of technical and economic infeasibility because, in the current neoliberal milieu, it cannot make a simply protectionist argument. The discourse, in other words, is protectionism by another name. While much of the literature in critical geography on neoliberalism has focused on de-regulation versus re-regulation, this paper illustrates how science, protectionism, and neoliberalism can become articulated uneasily and in sometimes unexpected ways.

Keywords: conditions of production, discourse, global environmental governance, methyl bromide, Montreal Protocol, neoliberalism, protectionism, science

• Class Consciousness or Natural Consciousness? Socionatural Relations and the Potential for Social Change: Suggestions from Development in Southern Honduras

By: Brian J. Gareau

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Class or Natural Consciousness.Gareau

ABSTRACT This article addresses the potential of eco-Marxism to enhance understanding of people/nature, or socionatural, relations by focusing on the effect of the so-called natural world on human perceptions of nature and society. Empirical data on hurricane frequency in Honduras suggest that so-called natural phenomena can contribute significantly to human perceptions of their environment. Interview data on an inhabited protected area in Honduras reveal how peasants have been negatively affected by Western-style development. Interview responses suggest that the difficult socionatural conditions in which they are embedded influence both the decisions made by inhabitants and their relation to the environment. The data also reveal that humans are not a homogeneous group but, rather, are affected disparately by socionatural phenomena based on different class and natural/ecological conditions. What emerges from the data are socionaturally determined classes, one of them in a highly precarious socionatural condition that likewise holds the kernel of the desire for social change. The data support a conjunction of political economy’s concern with power, social differentiation, and class analysis with concerns about how “nature” inextricably shapes human relations. This article illustrates how efforts made by groups like World Neighbors, a development organization working to make nature a less capricious actor, would be bolstered by an understanding of socionatural class conditions.
Keywords: Agroecology; Class Consciousness; Development; Ecological Marxism; Honduras; Peasants; Socionature

• Ecological Values amid Local Interests: Natural Resource Conservation, Social Differentiation, and Human Survival in Honduras

By: Brian J. Gareau

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gareaursoc-72-02-2442007.pdf

ABSTRACT Local peoples living in protected areas often have a different understanding about their natural space than do non-local groups that promote and declare such areas ‘‘protected.’’ By designing protected areas without local involvement, or understandings of local social differentiation and power, natural resources management schemes will likely be unsuccessful. Protected area Cerro Guanacaure in southern Honduras has been subject to many development projects, most of which have failed, and the local inhabitants observe that degradation of natural resources continues. However, this case study shows that this does not mean locals view natural resources simply in an individualistic, utilitarian way. They also see their surroundings in an ecological way, and a sociocultural way. This assessment is based upon in-depth interviews with local leaders and 208 fixed format interviews of park inhabitants in Cerro Guanacaure.

• Review of Ken Conca’s Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building

By: Brian J. Gareau and Ben Crow

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gareauandcrowiea2006.pdf

• Review of Jeffrey T. Jackson’s The Globalizers: Development Workers in Action

By: Brian J. Gareau

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jwsr-v12n2-jacksonreview.pdf