A direct consequence of the Montreal agreement on chlorofluorocarbons has been vastly increased interest in measures required to deal with climate change. Clearly the summer heat and fall hurricanes facilitated this movement, as did the ever clearer articulation of an emerging scientific consensus that greenhouse warming is upon us. Nevertheless one should not underestimate the significance of Montreal. Nothing breeds success like success, and the widespread feeling remains that -even if it needs strengthening -the Montreal protocol was a remarkable success.
Discussion of approaches to climate change have consequently entered a new phase. The stakes are high, not only for the environment. Many have recognized that climate change may be the topic of the nineties, providing research support and access to the public limelight for those involved. Consequently there is not an environmental organization, a research institute or a government agency which has not discovered that it was always vitally concerned about climate change. The Iruth of such claims are of little consequence: they are harbingers of future action.
Such positioning is a by now quite familiar phenomenon in environmental affairs. Because of the cross-cutting nature of most environmental issues it often involves a host of institutions with sometimes very contradictory goals. In government alone, agencies concerned with environmental protection, research, practical meteorology, energy, forestry, agriculture, transport and oceans are involved in the scramble. In due course the confusion will be sorted out and the major actors will become recognizable.
This part of the policy-making cycle is particularly difficult to manage at the international level where a large number of organizations by now exist, often with their particular champions: the Canadians have close ties to the World Meteorological Organization; France as host country has always been solicitous of the interests of Unesco; the United Kingdom watches out a little bit more carefully for the International Maritime Organization (IMO) -which is headquartered in London; many third world countries have sympathies for UNEP. There is no clear arbiter among the competing interests of these organizations. All have their own governing bodies with representation from member states. Nominally a country's positions in all these agencies should be coordinated and consistent. In practice close alliances are again formed between national government agencies and 'their' international client. It is hard to imagine the Department of Commerce caring with particular vehemence about UNEP's budget appropriations while it is certain to pay close attention to those of the IMO, yet the money comes from the same part of the State Department. Ultimately the domestic turf battles are fought all over again at the international level, only the rules are much more complex and few effective mechanisms are available to settle disputes once and for all. The result is the typical phenomenon of overlapping and competing jurisdictions between international agencies.
An important first step at the international level now appears to have been taken: the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a joint venture of