Search Results

This chapter examines the local and international politics underlying the bitter struggle to end usage of methyl bromide. Animal-based studies showed that methyl bromide is a mutagen and reproductive toxin. Upon breaking down in the atmosphere, methyl bromide, in combination with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), also depletes the ozone layer. Following the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer in 1985 and subsequent signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987, the United States committed to ending usage of ozone-depleting substances. An amendment to the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty to curb ozone depletion, in 1993 set a phase-out date for methyl bromide. This chapter discusses the collaborative efforts of farmworker groups and environmental organizations, including the Farmworker Association of Florida, Friends of the Earth, the Florida Consumer Action Network, and the Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation, to effect a methyl bromide ban in a battle with growers associations and industry groups.

The chapter analyzes the impact of downstream consumer markets on environmental regime design by explaining why wealthy countries have successfully phased out industrial ozone-depleting substances (ODS) but not an agricultural pesticide known as methyl bromide under the Montreal Protocol, despite the 2005 phase-out deadline for that pesticide. Since the analysis focuses on the regulation of different sectors under the same treaty, it isolates the impact of markets without the threat of major confounding variables interfering with the conclusions. It emphasizes competitive pressures and the structure of intermediate producers in the industrial and agricultural markets employing ODS to explain why methyl bromide has been handled differently from industrial refrigerants. The findings illustrate the impacts of consumer preferences and market competition on the investments of fluoro-product companies and, in turn, on the policies of wealthy countries and rules in the ozone regime.

This chapter provides a critical sociological assessment of the social organization of the Montreal Protocol, its institutional structure, and the impact of its various actors vis-à-vis social relations of power. A critical sociological perspective sheds light on the reasons for the recent shift to failure in phasing out remaining ozone-depleting substances (ODSs) in the Montreal Protocol, specifically MeBr. A case study on the delegitimization and dissolution of the Agricultural Economics Task Force (AETF) illustrates how powerful actors can vertically penetrate the horizontal “social capital” relationships, a process that is often overlooked in social capital analyses.

This chapter draws together the evidence of the last three chapters to consider the emergence of global standards as a driver of improvements in the environmental performance of industry. Our particular focus is the growing importance of firm-based global environmental standards as an alternative to the more widely recognized state-centered approaches to setting and implementing environmental standards. Increasing numbers of multinational firms (MNCs) are adopting uniform approaches to environmental management across all of their facilities worldwide, including in some cases process and performance-based environmental standards. Such intra-firm standards have even broader reach when they are also applied to the suppliers of the MNCs as part of standardized supply chain management. In this chapter we examine the rationale behind the adoption of firm-based approaches to global environmental standards, and whether such firm-based approaches add value to traditional state-centered environmental regulation and governance. Why are firm-based global standards being adopted by MNCs, and do these standards constitute a novel and effective approach to improving the environmental performance of industry? The chapter addresses the issue of global standards and the environment from the perspective of recent research within economic geography on issues of economic globalization. We take this starting point precisely because much of the recent interest in global environmental standards among politicians and policy makers is a reaction to economic globalization and to the likely environmental and social consequences of intensified flows of capital, technology, and information on a global scale. The growing force of neoliberal trade and investment regimes, and the rapid growth in foreign direct investment and international trade within the world economy, has led many to call for a new global governance of economic processes that will ensure more positive development outcomes (Rodrik et al. 2002; UNDP 2003). What Rodrik and others have in mind in this regard is some combination of supra-national institutional capability and strengthened state-based regulation to match the growing global reach of MNCs.