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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Science and Global Environmental Governance
- 3 Balancing Expertise: Critical Use and the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer
- 4 “Should We Be Voting on Science?”: Endosulfan and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants
- 5 Getting the Science (Committee) Right: Knowledge and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification
- 6 Institutionalizing Norms of Global Science Advice
- Epilogue
- Appendix: Methods
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Balancing Expertise: Critical Use and the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2019
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Science and Global Environmental Governance
- 3 Balancing Expertise: Critical Use and the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer
- 4 “Should We Be Voting on Science?”: Endosulfan and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants
- 5 Getting the Science (Committee) Right: Knowledge and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification
- 6 Institutionalizing Norms of Global Science Advice
- Epilogue
- Appendix: Methods
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
March 24, 2004. Montreal, Quebec. It's a cold spring day and over three hundred delegates are gathered in a windowless meeting room for the opening of an “extraordinary” meeting of the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS)— the first in its 17-year history. Although long heralded as the most successful of multilateral environmental agreements, parties to the Montreal Protocol had struggled at their meeting the previous November to reach an agreement on granting exemptions to a group of developed countries to continue using methyl bromide beyond its scheduled ban in 2005. Ultimately, this impasse was because the Technical Options Committee tasked with reviewing these exemptions had declined to rule on the validity of countries’ claims about the lack of alternatives. In preparation for this extraordinary session, parties had provided the Committee with revised guidance for its review of exemption applications. Yet, as the meeting is getting under way, in the sunlit atrium outside the heavy wooden doors, one of the Committee's expert members is setting up a table with a bountiful array of fresh vegetables, herbs, melons, pistachios and dried dates that were produced without methyl bromide. In doing so, she is literally setting the table for her objection to the Committee's recommendation to approve the bulk of the exemptions. The stakes are high: in places like the United States, exemptions would reverse a steady downward trajectory of use.
Following early successes in phasing out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs, a class of chemicals widely used in refrigeration and other industrial applications), subsequent amendments to the Montreal Protocol broadened the scope of the treaty to incorporate other ozone depleting substances. In 1992, methyl bromide was added to the roster and scheduled for a freeze (Litfin 1994). When, in 1997, parties agreed to step up controls, agreeing on a target phase-out date of 2005 for developed countries and 2015 for developing countries, the United States in particular pushed to allow parties to apply for exemptions permitting them to continue producing and using methyl bromide for applications deemed “critical” (UNEP 1997). The “critical” designation considers the impact of a “significant market disruption” from a ban.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Science Advice and Global Environmental GovernanceExpert Institutions and the Implementation of International Environmental Treaties, pp. 37 - 68Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2019