4
INTRODUCTION
capita basis these countries are generally less resource consumptive and less
polluting of the atmosphere than the industrialized countries.9 But the Third
World countries hope their economic position is temporary. They expect
further industrial growth, and, given the available industrial processes, this is
likely to have negative ecological implications. In addition, the poverty in
many of these countries has created pressures on natural resources, sometimes
resulting in the despoliation of natural ecosystems such as forests and coastal
areas, with significant implications for biological diversity.
The political and economic context has affected the way in which the
developing countries participate in environmental politics, with the end of
the Cold War further modifying their participation. During the Cold War,
some of these countries used to play First World against Second World
interests and were sometimes able to benefit economically from this
maneuver; with the end of the Cold War they have lost this leverage, and the
interests of the industrialized world have shifted to the development of the
resources and markets of the former Soviet bloc countries. The end of the
Cold War has put global environmental politics higher on the global agenda,
but in this post-Cold War context Third World countries have lost some
leverage, calling into question their ability to affect the evolution of global
environmental politics.
Global Environmental Politics in the Twentieth Century
Concern about environmental degradation is not a twentieth-century
phenomenon. In the second century B.C., Plato talked about the erosion
caused by earlier deforestation in Attica,10 and in the third century B.C.,
Erastothenes described how governmental land policy, navigation needs, and
mining resulted in the deforestation of Cyprus." But for the most part, the
concerns expressed throughout the centuries did not generate any widespread
alarm. The first vestiges of an environmental movement did not develop until
the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1865 the first private group
dedicated to environmental protection, the Commons, Footpaths, and Open
Spaces Preservation Society, was established in Britain. A few decades later,
groups focusing on wilderness preservation and resource conservation
developed in the United States.12
Environmental Politics, 1900-1960
Rudimentary efforts at international organization took place early in the
twentieth century. In Paris in 1909, at a meeting of the International Con-
gress for the Protection of Nature, European nature protectionists proposed
the creation of an international nature protection body.13 When this idea was
proposed to the governments of 19 major states, all but two agreed in