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The past two decades have seen a remarkable broadening of interest in global warming from a research concern on the part of a limited number of scientists to a political problem on a worldwide scale. The nature of this transformation would itself be a fruitful study for a mixed team of social scientists and natural scientists. It would be valuable to assess the differing nature of the staging posts along this road: the First World Climate Conference in 1979, which was a meeting of scientists talking to scientists; the Villach Assessment of 1985, which was a meeting of scientists whose report was given attention by the policy advisers of a number of governments; the Second World Climate Conference of 1990, which consisted of a scientific meeting followed by a Ministerial Meeting; and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992 signed by 158 countries at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in June 1992. The present publication is a welcome contribution of the followup to UNCED. By focusing on a specific problem, it avoids the pitfall of undue generalization and provides the basis for fruitful discussion between natural scientists, social scientists, and policymakers. To choose as the area of concentration a particular scale also helped to produce meaningful discussion likely to lead to action.
List of contents
I: Executive Summary.- I: Executive Summary.- II: Summary of Discussion Sessions.- II: Summary of Discussion Sessions.- III: Discussion Papers.- Background on the Climate Change Issue.- The regionalization of climate-related environmental problems.- The role of regional organizations in addressing climate change and other complex environment and development issues.- The climate change issue: Scientific aspects.- The climate change issue: Policy aspects.- Transnational regional responses to global climate change: Options, obstacles, opportunities.- An environmental security dimension of global climate change.- Water Resources.- Climate change and water resources.- Regional organizations and climate-related changes in the water regime.- Climate change and international water problems: Issues related to the formation and transformation of regional organizations.- Regional organization for water utilization in the Middle East.- Transboundary water resources on the Iberian Peninsula.- Marine Resources.- Some aspects of regional cooperation in the marine sciences.- The potential role of regional organizations related to the marine environment in the context of global climate change.- Scarcity, property allocation, and climate change.- Regional Organizations.- The Organization of American States (OAS) and issues of environment and development.- Regional organizations and environmental change: An East African example.- The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and climate change.- The roles of IGOs in international environmental management: Arena or actor.- Role of regional organizations in the context of climate change.- IV: Appendix.- Biographical Statements of Participants.- Item 4, Provisional Agenda, Working Group III.- List of Participants.- Suggested Bibliography.- Glossary of Acronyms.
